A few months prior, Steve and I had decided upon a change in our lives: certainty in the form of a bi-weekly paycheck was traded for joy in the form writing time.
Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity.
But this means more than that; as she has it, we must be able "to live without certainty" in a society that continually creates new opportunities while casting old decisions into doubt.
But clean-living certainty sells: over the past half-century the church has grown sevenfold, with half the world's 13m Mormons living outside the United States.The hotter bits of Islam have also gained ground.
Wyoming is a seller of raw commodities like natural gas to the global market, and state lawmakers have learned to live with the certainty that certainty itself is an illusion.
"A Jew dare not live with absolute certainty not only because certainty is the hallmark of the fanatic and Judaism abhors fanaticism, but also because doubt is good for the human soul, its humility, and consequently its greater potential ultimately to discover its Creator".
In the United States, people can have a reasonable certainty of living their lives in peace while coming together to solve collective problems.
This involved asking participants to choose between the certainty of living with the symptoms associated with each health state or gambling on a treatment with two possible outcomes: successful treatment or death.
All useful certainty lives in a penumbra of doubt.
We live in smug certainty that our taste is impeccable, our politics correct, our sense of outrage at the current regime totally warranted".
She considers how, if you never look, all the wonderful things you imagine and hope for may actually exist: the big family waiting to welcome you in, the empty seat with your name on it; but if you do look, you may have to live with the certainty that this perfect world does not exist at all and never did.
