Insights for Change: Embrace uncertainty
There's a moment from my short-lived but otherwise successful piano-playing phase in my youth that I will never forget. At a lesson one day, my piano teacher, Mrs. K, took away the music sheets and told me to just play something of my own. I can't remember if she articulated it quite this way, but in my memory, she effectively told me to compose something on the spot. I held my hands over the keyboard for what felt like an eternity of silence. I froze. I was terrified to play even a single note. Mrs. K finally relieved me of the embarrassment, and we went back to our usual lessons.
Conjure up the most stereotypical piano teacher you can think of, and that was Mrs. K. A kind woman but an exacting teacher, she instilled just enough fear to successfully mold me into a competition-winning classical pianist. At age 13. I learned to read music perfectly and play it back perfectly, or at least perfectly enough to impress youth piano competition judges. I knew what success looked like for her - and me - and I gave it to us. So it seemed unfair that after years of a painstaking quest for perfection in reading and performing classical works, she would spring on me the challenge to tap my own creativity. She hadn't taught me how to do that. I learned how to master existing things. I did not learn how to create new things. I knew how to strive for perfection but not for imagination. I gave up piano soon thereafter.
The New York Times published an essay last year by a pianist (a real one) that talks about the damaging "fetishization of perfection" and how it doesn't serve us in a time of great uncertainty: "You cannot talk to God by trying to avoid doing something wrong. … Our society faces serious, complex problems that cause real suffering and that pose serious threats. Finding solutions to those problems will involve imagination and courage, qualities that flourish only when we embrace uncertainty and acknowledge all that we do not, and perhaps cannot, know."
We live in incredibly uncertain times, and we tend to perceive that uncertainty as a risk or an obstacle, but a 2022 book by couple Nathan and Susannah Harmon Furr, The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown, makes the case that "uncertainty may be the only pathway to the possibilities many of us dream about." More significantly, they lay out incredibly practical ways to not just manage uncertainty but embrace it.
One of their arguments is that we can better face uncertainty, and indeed create "extraordinary outcomes," when we work primarily out of our values rather than anxiously striving toward a particular goal or outcome that may actually be out of our control. As people of faith deeply rooted in values, this should come easy. Yet uncertainty causes such discomfort that we often harden our values into dogma to create what we believe to be clarity in the face of chaos. In doing so, we actually limit rather that enable possibility. At the other extreme, we let our values become an excuse for not pursuing possibility, eschewing certain goals and outcomes entirely because we're either afraid or unsure of how to let our values play out in the world with other ideas.
Two other concepts the Furrs lay out in their book may help break these patterns. First, be an infinite rather than a finite player: "Finite players accept the roles life gives them (e.g., college student, manager, lawyer, parent, spouse) and play by the received rules in an effort to win. Infinite players play with the roles and bend the rules, not to win the game but for the joy of playing." One of the songs I had perfected on piano, as most young piano players do, was Beethoven’s Für Elise. Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste has a version of Für Elise that breaks the rules, introducing jazz measures into the song's otherwise familiar classical melody. Jon is an infinite player, and we can be too. If God is infinite, then surely we were made to be infinite players. We can play with our roles as clergy and lay people, with the roles of our buildings and other assets, even with our theological narratives. The Jewish biblical exegesis method of midrash, for instance, is an ancient and ongoing creative practice of interpreting and re-interpreting Scripture. It treats the Hebrew Bible as infinitely generative, playing with the text and particularly the gaps in the text, creating space for every new generation to find new meaning there.
Second, look for adjacent possibles. The concept of the adjacent possible comes from theoretical biology, used to explain evolutionary adaptations, but it has become a foundational tool for innovators. The concept as applied to innovation says that there are infinite possibilities hidden beyond what we can currently see. We see a paper clip and understand that its purpose is to hold loose paper together. But in a popular creativity exercise, people come up with as many other uses for that paper clip as they can. Those are adjacent possibles. My favorite example of an adjacent possible comes from the work of Zen Buddhist monk and social entrepreneur Bart Weejens who discovered that rats could help detect land mines by smell and are too light to trigger them, thus providing a path to clearing mines in former conflict zones without injury to humans or animals. Turns out they can also detect tuberculosis more efficiently than lab technicians. What are the adjacent possibles swirling around us every day?
The same piano that I spent hours at as a kid trying to perfect my playing to make Mrs. K proud now sits in my own home. I still sometimes sit down and try to perfect a song, but sometimes I just sit and let my fingers go where they would like, embracing the uncertainty of the limits of my knowledge and abilities, certain that I will play notes that don't sound quite right but delighted that I get to talk to God.
For many more ideas, tips, and tools for embracing uncertainty, pick up a copy of The Upside of Uncertainty.
Author: Danielle Goldstone
Insights for Change is our series to pose questions and share short insights (our own and others’) for thinking creatively about faith and social change. They may be full-baked, half-baked, or just a pile of raw ingredients to play with. We hope they start conversation or inspire ideas. We invite you to add your own thoughts, experiences, and ideas to the mix.