Against Certainty
Dear Readers,
In my last two posts on February 22 and March 1, I discussed some of Polish Poet Wislawa Szmboska’s remarks about inspiration from her Nobel Lecture on December 7, 1996.
I specifically addressed her statement that “Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know.’”
In our contemporary times, too many people say they know with absolute certainty about other people, events, situations, and things, and profit from their certainty. It’s one thing to have conviction. It’s another thing not to have any doubt or humility, which is the essence of being healthily human. Extreme certainty leads to the arrogance of intolerance. Here’s a wonderful poem from Jane Hirshfield, that I have memorized, that speaks against certainty.
Against Certainty
There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.
Each time I think “this,” it answers “that.”
Answers hard, in the heart-grammar’s strictness.
If I then say “that,” it too is taken away.
Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.
When the cat waits in the path-hedge,
no cell of her body is not waiting.
This is how she is able so completely to disappear.
I would like to enter the silence portion as she does.
To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live,
one shadow fully at ease inside another.
—Jane Hirshfield
Have a good week!
David
The older I get the more I realize how little I know. 💜
This will be shared, David, thank you.