All too often, I plan my life away. I make
arrangements way ahead, work out what I’m going to be doing weeks or months in
advance. It gives me a sense of security, the impression that I’m in control of
my life. And when things go wrong - or seem to go wrong – then it’s all about
how to fix it. What can I do right now, straightaway, to make it better?
There’s also a strong sense of that when I’m
in my GP surgery. People come to see me with problems, often hugely distressing
problems. It feels like it’s my job to help to fix them – in just 10 minutes.
And when I’m working as a researcher, there’s
continual pressure to come up with quick answers and solutions.
But, let’s just hold on a minute…… Perhaps
that’s not always the best way to go.
Being uncertain, not being sure, not rushing
to make my mind up: perhaps that has some advantages.
‘Negative
capability’ is the term created by the poet John Keats. In a letter to his
brothers in 1817, he writes about how achievement is linked with the capacity
of ‘being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason.’
The Irish poet Aubrey de Vere speaks for ‘the
doubt of one who would rather walk in mystery than in false lights, who awaits
that he may win, and who prefers the broken fragments of truth to the imposing
completeness of a delusion’.
This is important
not just in poetry (or in research), but in life, particularly when we are facing
our own distress, or the distress of others.
Maybe we don’t need to try to work everything
out so quickly. Maybe it’s better to wait, to reflect, to allow events to
unfold for a while. Maybe it’s better to let the mysterious or doubtful remain just
that, rather than rushing to conclusions that may be false, or making decisions
that could turn out to be damaging.
As Beth Rushing says, there is ‘hope, and
truth, and beauty in the practice of negative capability, in listening
patiently, having a certain level of comfort with uncertainty, and in
recognizing that what appears to
be given, is not necessarily so’. For the psychoanalyst
Wilfred Bion, it’s about listening ‘without memory or desire’.
We do well to cultivate our ability to tolerate the pain and confusion of not knowing - rather than
imposing our ready-made certainties on ambiguous situations or challenges.
And by resting in uncertainty, we allow
space for something new, something transformative, to emerge.
