We Are All Figuring It Out As We Go Along

All our lives we do the best with the information we have. Sometimes it is a lot, sometimes almost none at all.

Photo by Rob Schreckhise on Unsplash

There are no manuals or ‘how to’s for life. There are trends and cycles and themes which persist and at times repeat but nothing which is happening now has ever truly happened before. Even an identical event happening only a few years, or even a few moments, apart is not truly identical because the world and people experiencing it are not the same. People’s experiences, perspectives, and capabilities change. Technologies, circumstances, and resources change. To borrow from the proverb, dipping the same stick in the same river twice is not possible. The waters have moved on so the river is no longer the same, the stick is already wet and so is also no longer the same.

This does not mean we go into every moment of our lives blind and empty handed. Through the accumulation of experiences, both our own and those of others, we are able to make educated guesses and predictions about potential cause-and-effect outcomes. The stick will likely make the same splashing noise and the river will not likely be suddenly twice as deep but something unforeseen could still happen to change the outcome in unexpected ways. An unnoticed flaw in the stick might cause it to split or a rock in the riverbed might tumble away exposing lose mud for the stick to…