The beauty of uncertainty. – KT Tungstal
Maybe this sounds like two roads that will never meet but the truth is there’s faith in physics. At it’s best physics tells us what we know with certainty about the universe, but any physicist will tell you that there is more that remains unknown than known, a lot more. It starts with a hunch or observation, the math predicts the way in which the universe should work and can then be tested out to see if that’s the way the universe in fact does work. But there are plenty of theories that are yet untestable and remain pure speculation. They are ideas in progress that may ultimately fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces making the bigger picture of the universe clearer. Theories often feel right even though they can’t currently be proven because they make sense in the larger scheme of things or solve a lot of problems in other areas of research. This believing that someday a theory that feels right will be proven to be true is just another way of describing what it means to have faith. It’s feeling it in the bones. Are their theories right or wrong, we won’t know until they can be proved, until then it’s all faith. A physicist following their hunch or their heart is no different from what religion or spirituality asks of us in living our daily lives.
Faith is a good and necessary thing, a strong inner belief can pull us through some very rocky times when there is nothing else to hold onto. Our ability to believe in something that can’t be known outright is miraculous. Somewhere in our bodies, minds, or hearts we have enough conviction in our belief and are brave enough to trust in it. It’s what Erwin Shroedinger would call knowing and yet not knowing at the same time. This is actively engaging with the mystery. We leave the door open to what’s unknown and hang out in a place where we have faith that something is true before knowing if it’s actually true, perhaps sometimes never knowing. That takes some guts. This kind of living with certainty of what’s uncertain is both comforting and unsettling. This is exactly the nature of life and living. In all honesty we really don’t know much of anything, we just believe we do, we have faith we are correct in our beliefs and this carries us forward to new discoveries of ourselves, our lives, and the world we live in. We all have faith in one way or another, it doesn’t matter whether it’s religious or scientific. Faith is a glue that holds us together in order to get us to what’s next. There is a deep beauty and awe in being able to realize that what we don’t know far outweighs what we do, and that the state we live in contains these two opposites all the time. Faith is the ship we sail to navigate the dark waters.
Jung would call it holding the tension of the opposites, we live with the mystery, asking the questions, fully engaged until clarity dawns. This is what we’re involved with everyday to a greater or lesser extent. It’s about balancing our two worlds, inner and outer, unknown and known, waiting for an answer. Faith keeps us from being overwhelmed all the time or giving up. There is a disconcerting beauty in living alongside the mystery of knowing we will never have all the answers, but it doesn’t have to stop us from believing. Our faith is what carries us through difficult times, gut-wrenching loss, and the perplexing mysteries of the universe we inhabit.
Maybe it’s time to devise our own theory of living and begin testing it out.
kb
