Everything good in your life started before you knew how it would end.
The friend you call when things go wrong was once a stranger you almost did not talk to. The work you are proud of began as an attempt you were not sure you could finish. On the day you said yes to any of it, you had no proof it would work. And yet when a new decision arrives, we ask for exactly that proof. We want to see the ending before we agree to begin.
“I’ll start once I know it’s going to work out.”
That kind of knowledge exists only about things that are finished. You can be certain about last year because last year is over. A decision you have not made yet cannot give you that feeling, however long you study it. So there is a point in every decision where you have collected what can be known. After that point you are no longer gathering information. You are only waiting.
Waiting feels like the safe option, even though it has no right to. Staying where you are is also a choice, and its outcome is just as hidden. The job you keep, the conversation you put off, and the idea you leave in a drawer all lead somewhere you cannot see either. No certain option is on the table. You are choosing between two unknowns, and one of them at least points toward something you want.
Seneca met this problem in On Benefits, while asking whether you should help a person when you cannot know whether they will be grateful. His answer covers every decision a person makes. We never wait for complete certainty, he writes, because the truth is hard to reach. We follow good reasons. The farmer sows without knowing the harvest. The sailor leaves port without knowing the sea. People marry and raise children with no promise about how any of it will go.
So the useful question before a decision is whether you have good reasons, and that one can be answered today. Write down what you know, what you want, and the worst realistic result. Ask if you could live with that result. If the reasons hold, you have everything a human being ever gets before acting.
Good reasons still fail sometimes. A careful decision can end badly and a careless one can turn out fine, so the result alone cannot tell you whether you did well. The Stoics judged an action another way, and Cicero records it in On Ends, where Cato uses the picture of an archer shooting at a target.
The archer decides how much he trains, how he stands, how carefully he aims, and when he lets go. Once the arrow is in the air he cannot touch it, and a sudden wind can carry a good shot off the target. So every shot has two parts. The shot itself belongs to him. Where the arrow lands belongs to him only partly. The Stoic advice is to put your effort and your self-respect into the part that is yours.
In your life, the shot is your preparation, the care you put into the decision, and the effort you give. The landing is whether you got the job, whether the business survived, whether the person said yes. You can prepare for an interview for two weeks and lose the position to someone the company had already chosen. That was a good shot that missed, and the miss alone is no reason to change how you prepare. You can also walk in unprepared and get lucky. That was a bad shot that hit, and it teaches a habit that will fail you later. After anything important, ask two separate questions. Did I shoot well? Where did it land? If the landing shows you something you could have done better, use it. Otherwise leave your method alone.
None of this means the archer stops caring about the target. He wants to hit it, and every hour of his training is for that. What changes is where his attention goes during the shot. An archer who is thinking about the prize, or about how a miss will look to the crowd, has less attention left for his hands. Fear of the result makes the shot worse. Letting go of the result for the length of the shot gives him his best chance of getting it.
A shot is over in a second, and the things you want can take months. For longer plans Seneca describes a habit in On Tranquillity of Mind. The wise person attaches a condition to every plan. I will sail, unless something prevents it. Disappointment hurts less, he adds, for someone who never promised himself success.
You can use this with any plan you have now. Say the plan, add the condition, and then spend five minutes naming what could get in the way. An obstacle you have thought about in advance is usually easier to meet. One you never considered can feel like the end of the whole plan. Then commit as fully as if nothing will stop you, because the condition is there to prepare you for a setback and gives you no reason to hold back.
Often we want to know the future because we doubt we could handle it. If you were sure you could cope with whatever came, you would feel less need to see it first. Marcus Aurelius told himself not to let the future disturb him, because he would meet it with the same reason he was already using on the present. That is a kind of security that comes from knowing yourself, and unlike certainty, it can be built. Every time you act on good reasons, take a miss, and shoot again, you collect evidence that you can cope when things do not go as planned. That evidence does more against fear than any forecast.
The future will stay hidden for as long as you live. The person who walks into it is being built today, by everything you do without knowing how it ends.
Stay stoic,
SW
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The most important thing I did while climbing out of my depression in my late teenage years was not a technique. It was not an app, a routine, or a book about depression. It was opening myself up to learning new things.
Uncertainty becomes dangerous when we mistake the absence of certainty for the absence of a basis to act. We rarely get complete information. Sound judgement is knowing what is sufficiently clear to decide, what still needs to be tested, and what we simply have to accept we cannot know yet. Waiting for certainty can feel prudent, but sometimes it is just fear masked as analysis.
I love this article. 💕