the man who was certain of his uncertainty
He was a man secure in himself, even in moments of profound insecurity.
Everyone saw him as almost always right: wise in his choices, measured in his judgments, elegant in his gestures. They considered him right even when he admitted he was wrong. His very doubts became proof of wisdom.
Faced with darkness that appeared to have no exit, he would say: “I want to believe I’m wrong, but I fear being wrong on those times when I know and feel I’m right.”
Security was illusory. A human invention to avoid facing life’s permanent ambivalence. And what a necessary invention! “Confronting the paradoxical nature of life without the necessary capacities and training leads certainly to madness,” he’d say.
In his most desperate moments, when uncertainty flooded him and the anguish of mortality tinged everything, he would cry out: “What a whore this life is! Selling itself to illusions while giving itself freely to truth…”
He lived as we all do: trapped between knowing and not-knowing, absolutely certain of his complete uncertainty.
the impossibility of standing nowhere
For this same man, objectivity was impossible; a comforting illusion that helped him swallow what few certainties made sense: that everything is uncertain, everything relative.
