It’s funny how certainty and uncertainty are often one and the same thing. In the absence of thinking properly about one, we convince ourselves of the other. We ignore the unknown and fool ourselves that we know everything. That can only last so long. 

At some point, we have to recognise that Donald Rumsfeld had a point: some things are just unknown unknowns. And the future is just that. We just don’t know. We might like to think about how we’d like it to be, but the reality is that tomorrow never comes. 

And that’s OK. 

It wasn’t always OK. I, like many, have a need to know problem – I need to know everything. And, now I know more than I did, I know that I know very little of now, and nothing of what’s to come. I’m dealing with known unknowns. I’m dancing in the shadows.

There’s a certain sadness at facing up to the fact that life as it has been is unlikely to be life as it will be. And we all have to mourn our lost dreams. But we can’t wear black forever. Sometimes, yes, but only JR Cash could every really carry off that look on a long term basis. For the rest of us, a life in colour is so much richer an experience. Where we can have that, we should.

And I shall. It just requires a renewed focus on what’s a known known, and a known unknown. Or as someone put it more succinctly: 

Don’t let what you can’t do get in the way of what you can do.