Hmmm, I’m not sure…
This may be a good essay. Or it may not. Let me explain.
One of the first things that you learn in any writing workshop or in any “how to write better” book is to avoid using qualifiers. “Perhaps,” “maybe,” and “possibly,” are like adding ice cubes to your 30-year old single-malt-special-edition-made-by-William-Wallace’s-descendants-scotch. As William Zinsser writes in On Writing Well:
“Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader’s trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don’t diminish that belief. Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold.”
As a reader, you take time out of your day to gain a new perspective, to learn something. If I’m telling you that I’m not precisely sure what I’m trying to convey, or that I’m uncertain about what I’m writing, it won’t be worth your time to read my piece, or any of my future work, ever again. I will lose the battle of attention against the dozens of screens and entertainment choices at your fingertips. Tough battle. The only way to win is to write confidently, with a clarity that makes Fiji water look like sewage.
See, that’s a bit of a problem for me.
My curiosity is one of my most notorious traits. I’m the “question guy” at work (always have been). The gift of my curiosity is that I question everything. The curse of my curiosity is that I question everything. Not only do I question big topics like how people communicate, race, creativity, habits, etc., but I also question my conclusions and reflections on these topics. For a lot of these I have a point of view. Yet, it’s a mighty struggle for me to feel like my perspective is absolutely infallible with a vacuum sealed veracity that must not be tested.
“What if I’m not right? Shouldn’t I let the reader know that I could be wrong?”
In my pursuit of intellectual honesty and earnest humility, I add qualifiers to my essays as a sign that I’m aware I have blind spots in my perspective, and to avoid the all-or-nothing tone that our discourse has taken today. We live in binaries too often nowadays, so I endeavor to show that between the opposites there is a spectrum; that between black or white there is, should we say, 50 shades of gray (don’t come at me).
Even in subjects where I can speak credibly, I introduce an element of doubt. The scientist knows that their theorem is as good as the accepted truths it is built upon, and those accepted truths could be contested in the future. Newton was right until Einstein said “well, not so fast.”
There seems to be a disconnect. A collective cognitive dissonance. Write with certainty, but avoid binaries. Don’t qualify your perspective, but avoid sounding dogmatic.
Perhaps it would be easier if we thought about everything in terms of probabilities. Maybe it would be easier to add qualifiers if we were more comfortable with the idea of uncertainty in the first place.
It’s possible that some people like the introduction of doubt–a healthy sign of self-awareness by the author. Others may want to grab the author by their arms, shake them, and tell them “believe in what you are telling me!”
In exploring the mysteries of what surround us, I cannot claim to have seen it all. I cannot place my head underwater, and claim to have found Atlantis.
As I continue to write, I’ll traverse this high-wire act of having a perspective you can taste, while leaving space for a course correct. For now, I’m certain that I will always remain uncertain about what I write; otherwise I wouldn’t be curious about it in the first place.
I’m also certain that opinions can change over time. In fact, they will likely change over time if I expose myself to alternative points of view. Doubt is a symptom that you are escaping the echo chamber.
So maybe this was not quite the essay you were looking for, and perhaps you might be frustrated with the time I’ve taken from you by now. So let this be a pause where you reflect: Can confidence and doubt coexist? If so, how converge what seems to be direct opposites?
That’s what I’m asking myself at least.
