This strikes me as pointing to the need for, and difficulty of, sitting with existential uncertainty and making rational decisions anyway. That is presumably how e.g. Camus might see it, but it is also for example a common challenge for startup founders. You want to avoid both the mistake of overconfidence and the mistake of giving up hope, and act so that whatever happens you can honestly say you did your best. But something in our psyche hates uncertainty so much that we would rather paralyze ourselves with catastrophizing, for the comfort of "knowing" that doom is foreordained, than act in the real knowledge that we cannot be sure of a good result from our actions.
This is something I am thinking about a lot this year both in relation to climate discourse and election discourse.
And if you want to frame that in terms of patience, it is the patience that Qohelet counsels. You don't know how long the bread you cast upon the waters will take to return to you, or what evil will intervene in the meantime. Give of yourself anyway.
This strikes me as pointing to the need for, and difficulty of, sitting with existential uncertainty and making rational decisions anyway. That is presumably how e.g. Camus might see it, but it is also for example a common challenge for startup founders. You want to avoid both the mistake of overconfidence and the mistake of giving up hope, and act so that whatever happens you can honestly say you did your best. But something in our psyche hates uncertainty so much that we would rather paralyze ourselves with catastrophizing, for the comfort of "knowing" that doom is foreordained, than act in the real knowledge that we cannot be sure of a good result from our actions.
This is something I am thinking about a lot this year both in relation to climate discourse and election discourse.
And if you want to frame that in terms of patience, it is the patience that Qohelet counsels. You don't know how long the bread you cast upon the waters will take to return to you, or what evil will intervene in the meantime. Give of yourself anyway.