I recently had two near-strangers make astonishingly confident pronouncements about my life after having known me for several minutes each. Their statements contradicted each other, but because I myself had privately thought both things before, I nodded and smiled seriously at both of them, leaving both with the impression of having ascertained something deeply true about me.
At the same time, I bristled at their satisfaction in having clocked the situation (and so quickly!), their certainty that a half truth was the whole truth. I wanted them both to know the other side of the story, to understand the complexity of the matter, to be as intimately familiar with all the facts and feelings as I am, and then see how hard they came down on either side.
As I know firsthand, it’s not so simple. Neither truth can be easily dismissed. Aside from having originated inside my brain, both truths came from fairly credible sources, sources which were, however, not without their blindspots. One of the two near-strangers makes confident pronouncements for a living, but her assessment was based solely on my (incomplete) reports. The other has directly observed me in action, but knows nothing about what I think and feel.
Their words hang in the balance of my mind.
This is wrong for you.
This is right for you.
Wish as I might for someone to just burst onto the scene and tell me what to do, I’ve always thought that, almost no matter what they said, I would probably sigh wearily and say, “You don’t understand.” Now I have double confirmation that this is indeed what would happen. Sadly, the only one who I would trust enough to speak confidently and authoritatively on the subject is the Universe Itself, and if the Universe Itself did put in, it would probably rumble something along the lines of, “This is neither right for you nor wrong for you,” before trailing off into cosmic silence while I stammered through some pathetic follow-up question.
Perhaps to examine one’s life is to reveal its central riddle. Once it has been revealed, it’s liable to stump you good. But if you just sit there, stumped, rather than living your life with respect for the riddle, there’s not much to examine. Perhaps we must be willing to live before having solved it.
Or, perhaps I’ll soon be visited by yet another audacious stranger on a mission from the Universe Itself.