Recently I’ve been thinking about the fact that we can’t predict anything.
Yeah, we can predict the weather this afternoon, kind of — though the meteorologists seem to mess up about 50% of the time. Sure, we can be fairly certain that an asteroid from outer space isn’t going to come careening toward Earth, smashing our house to 1,000 pieces while we sleep, I guess. I’m not too worried about that one.
Many babies are born with grey or light blue eyes; it’s only over time that they morph into the color they will be for the rest of their lives.
But the reality is, life is more unpredictable than it is predictable.
Plan check
That’s the truth, and it’s hard for us, I think. We want to know what tomorrow will bring. We want to plan, and we want to make sure we are prepared for whatever is coming. We want to build civilization, and in some pretty key ways, building civilization requires planning.
Civilization itself is a form of predictability, or an attempt to increase predictability. Running water, reliable medical care, stores stocked with meat and eggs, traffic lights that are coordinated in a complex system so as to ensure drivers don’t crash into one another other, and electricity that doesn’t go out every other day. These things are predicable things, and life is better — much better — because of them.
But we can’t predict everything.
Answers and questions
Last week, my wife gave birth to our third child and our second daughter. We didn’t find out the sex ahead of time. We always wait to be surprised, and it was a surprise. Finally we had an answer to the most pressing question on our minds: Is it a boy or a girl? But there are so many more questions, and I have no idea what the answers will be.
Holding her in my arms, looking down into her little eyes, I wonder what color they will be. Many babies (of European descent) are born with grey or light blue eyes; it’s only over time that they morph into the color they will be for the rest of their lives. Our son has brown eyes; our other daughter has blue eyes. What will she have? I have no idea.
I look at her little hands and perfectly soft cheeks, and I wonder who she will be. I have no inkling. Not a single clue. She might be anyone. Her personality could be anything. Is there a seed of it already in her? There must be, but I don’t know it. I don’t know her yet.
There, in my arms, is this little person who might become anyone and anything. I have no idea what she will find funny, how she will be difficult, what she will be interested in, who she will marry, where she will live, how many children she will have, and 100,000 other things that make up a person. I don’t know any of it, and I have no way to predict any of it. All I can do is hold her, care for her, and try to steer her along the way.
A newborn baby is a metaphor for life.
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Predictably unpredictable
When I look back at my life, there is no way I could have predicted any of it. No way I could have told my 28-year-old self where I would be today, what I would do for work, who I would be a father to, where I would live, and how I would feel. I just couldn’t have.
If I go back even further than that, it gets even more obvious. Eighteen-year-old me thought life was going to be one way, and it turned out not at all that way. Some stuff turned out harder, but most turned out better. Nevertheless, however it turned out, I couldn’t have predicted any of it.
The same, of course, goes for all the various social, cultural, and technological developments marching through our society today. I don’t think anyone in 2005 could have accurately predicted AI in 2025. I doubt anyone in 1995 could have predicted the cultural or political debates we are having in 2025. No one could have predicted the years-long ordeal known as COVID.
Serenity now!
Accepting the chaos and unpredictability of life doesn’t mean giving up on any kind of planning or attempt at establishing order. Those things are good; they are a part of civilization after all, remember? Coming face-to-face with the reality of life as something unpredictable means accepting the things we cannot change. It means internalizing Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous Serenity Prayer.
While it may be hard at first for us to accept the unpredictability of it all, it’s more than OK once we make it through the process of reckoning with the uncontrollable. It feels like looking out at the vast horizon and seeing endless possibilities. Like rolling the windows down, setting your arm on the edge of the door, and pressing the gas. Like letting go and letting it all happen. Like looking into the eyes of a newborn baby, knowing that for her, life has only just begun.
Like something beautiful.
Lifestyle, Men’s style, Parenthood, Fatherhood, Newborn, Gender reveal, The root of the matter
