There are times where even a hint of doubt is undesirable. For example, high-stakes situations with immediate consequences; like landing an aircraft or performing life-saving surgery. For a lot of other things however we carry more doubt than we show and we tend to hide it even from ourselves. Maybe because action requires certainty and commitment to follow through and we fear if we dwell too long in doubt, we’ll melt our resolve to act. But suppressing doubt doesn’t nullify it. We carry uncertainty, hesitation and indecision perpetually.
A particularly poignant example for me is Mother Teresa, who continued in her good works despite a 50-year crisis of faith. She says in one of her letters to her spiritual advisor – “When I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great, nothing touches my soul.” This is was written in the 1940s, relatively early in her work and roughly 30 years before her Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. These doubts never abated but she didn’t abandon her belief or her work.
It’s a difficult place to operate from…when something speaks to us intrinsically enough that we commit to it but know on some level that we know little and will never know the full picture. Parenting, faith, and entrepreneurship are some common examples but the biggest example is the human life itself. Most of our discomfort is tied to the existential questions. Can any of us say with 100% certainty, without any doubt why we are here, what the purpose of a human life is, and what happens after we die? We fill in the blanks with high-judgment estimates and go about focusing on our daily life and goals. We let the act of living guide and consume us enough to create a sense of certainty in aspects: “I don’t know what happens after but know I was made for this work”. “The only thing I’m certain of is that I love my kids”. “Math has always made sense to me”. “I feel at home when I play the piano”. And so on. Micro doses of certainty on the macro path of unknown. Moments of clarity interwoven with moments of doubt, fear and loss.
My evolving theory on doubt is this:
- The clearest indicator of what we should pursue and how we should live is a faint and sometimes hard to hear signal that we carry somewhere inside. Even though we carry it within, it comes across only when we silence the noise of daily pursuits, and listen without judgment. Because we may resist what we hear.
- We have to act despite doubt. The action doesn’t need to be big or all at once.
- A shared space with other people doing similar work is a huge boost, especially if we aren’t comfortable with what we’re being called to do. If this space or collective doesn’t exist, we need to create it.
#3 is perhaps the most important part in working alongside doubt. It ensures that in difficult moments, we have the wisdom of others doing their own but similar work. That we have a safe space to air doubt, gain perspective and courage to keep going. It’s important that they understand this specific practice we have chosen. Its nuance, its promise, its fear, its draw and terror, the joy of having taken this path and the ache of having given up other options. If we want to keep going, it’s important we create a space that helps us recommit when we stumble.
“It’s not necessary to be a saint to do good. You need willing hands, not clean ones. If we wait for our souls to be totally clean, our time on Earth may slip away.”― Mother Teresa: Roman Catholic nun
