If you’re unhappy and want change, you must embrace uncertainty

By David McElroy · July 5, 2011

Why do people remain in situations in which they’re unhappy? Why do people hate their jobs, but remain there? Why do people in miserable marriages remain, frequently producing children to join in the dysfunction? And why do people who see the sickness of a failing political system remain loyal to it rather than look for alternatives?

I suspect it’s largely because people have trouble dealing with uncertainty. They might be miserable with what they have, but they’re unwilling to give it up until they have proof that the alternative is better. They’re scared to step out into the uncertainty of taking a chance and they’re scared to have faith that they can build something better.

It’s uncertainty that makes people terribly uncomfortable with certain situations and even certain art. In the work of M.C. Escher, we see a perfect example. Instead of painting normal and understandable things in the world around us, this brilliant Dutch artist created works that feel uncomfortable to many people, because much of it feels contradictory and uncertain, such as the example above. (Which way is the water flowing, anyway? How can what you’re looking at even exist?)

Earlier today, I was asking some people why so many feel driven to have opinions about things they’re not qualified to have opinions about. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think it’s because of this need for certainty. If you care about the outcome of a murder trial — as many did with the Casey Anthony trial when the verdict came down today — you tend to tell yourself that you know more than you do. If you think the murder victim was cute and defenseless — as was the case of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony — and if you think the accused is a hardened liar — as was the case of her mother, Casey Anthony — it’s easy to decide that you’re certain who killed the girl. It’s not really that you can prove the case. You simply feel a need to know the truth, so you choose to believe (with certainty) whatever feels right to you. It might not be rational, but it’s human nature.

When I mentioned unhappy situations that people stick with, I intentionally chose an example for which the solution might be controversial, divorce. Many people — especially those of us from more theologically conservative Christian backgrounds — believe that divorce is a terrible thing, because the Bible tells us (in Malachi 2:16, for example) that God hates divorce. It’s interesting to me that the Bible tells us many, many other things that God also hates — including lying and gossip (James 3:5-6, among numerous examples) — but we treat divorce as something that’s just not done while we engage in “white lies” and gossip frequently. Why? In addition to the fact that the harsh prohibition against divorce served society’s needs in the past, I think it’s also because it was a further reason for people to stick to their miserable certainty rather than take a chance on uncertain futures instead. (My complete thoughts about divorce are far too complicated to try to go into here.)

It seems that people will find any excuse to avoid uncertainty, even if it means remaining miserable. In modern society, most Americans complain about the direction of the United States politically, but the vast majority want to stick with a broken and immoral majoritarian system. (The same is true for other wester democracies.) Why? Because they don’t know what the alternative is.

For those of us who see that another way is possible, the first thing we have to work toward is showing other people that there is an alternative. The best solution would be if people could suddenly embrace and accept uncertainty, but that’s not likely to happen on a widespread basis. The second best solution is that a small number of us embrace uncertainty and build viable alternatives, because the Doubting Thomases will join us when it becomes obvious — and the future we’re talking about doesn’t appear so uncertain.

In motivational and self-help circles, there’s a line that’s become a cliche: “Leap and the net will appear.” The truth is that the net doesn’t always appear. We might hurt ourselves in the leap — whether that leap is quitting a job or admitting we married the wrong person or giving up on a political system we have an emotional stake in. But if the net is there, the payoff is tremendous. I’m willing to take the chance on the leap of faith, because staying with the status quo isn’t making anyone happy.

Note: Here’s a nice animation of the Escher painting that appears with this article.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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