Uncertainty

Where do dreams go? Do they remain, somewhere in the ether of reality, when they have passed? Is there a record somewhere of all the yearnings of mankind through the ages? If one could look into dreams, I wonder, what would one find? Perhaps all dreams have been dreamed before. Perhaps the secret yearnings of our hearts are desperate echoes of other dreams, repeating through the ages.


What are dreams, anyway? Anyone who remembers their dreams remembers the desperation of their real life, the people they think about, but they also remember things so far-gone that they cannot even begin to explain their strangeness. What wanderings in the deepest part of our mind produce these twists—and what do they mean? Are our dreams trying to tell us things?

It is more than likely that they are figments of our imagination, nonexistent, and completely out of our control. But one can’t help wondering what there is in our minds that causes them. It’s mildly unsettling to think that, indeed, we do not have complete control over our mind, that there is something below the level of consciousness. One can’t help thinking … how does it influence us? This subconscious…what does it do? Does it see as we do? Does it think? Is it obedient to our will? Is it, well , benevolent?

So, the depths of it are like science fiction, and perhaps improbable. It’s no secret, though, that we still have much to learn about ourselves. We lack the capacity of using so much of our brains—science has proved that. If we could use it; if we were capable of doing it; if we could only learn to do it; what would change? Would anything change?

Possibility is endless, as it were. Before certainty, imagination fills up the gaps so quickly and voraciously with millions of explanations. Is, then, certainty always better than the unknown? How often has your imagination created hopes of many things only to be surprised (not always pleasantly) when the reality is revealed? Perhaps simply not knowing is better than the absolute certainty.

Yet after all, the uncertainty is one of the reasons why we have wars. If we were certain that something was right (if we were certain of the nature or existence of a higher power!), our lives would be much different, but they would have the potential of being so much better (or worse).

In my understanding, the only thing we can be certain of is that uncertainty is a part of us and shapes our lives, in all its forms: in dreams, in reality, in faith, in hope. We err because we are human. We lack certainty because we are human. And as long as we still continue the search for certainty in the knowledge that we don’t know everything and likely never will, we will continue to be human. The moment we imagine we know more than we do, that we are the masters and not part of everything, is the day we fall into our darkness once more.