Nonsense - Jamie Holmes - Part 2

Nonsense - Jamie Holmes

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 144

  May 24, 2017 

Book 43 - Nonsense - The Power of Not Knowing
Jamie Holmes (2015)
 Part 2 - pages 63-110
Reading Time - 1 hour

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, there were a tonne more marriages than normal. When we feel threatened... we want certainty. For some that might mean getting married. For others... it might mean getting divorced. We might have been sitting on the fence for a while... but along comes a threat... and we choose one side of the fence or the other. We want certainty. And it isn't always a direct connection. Uncertainty from a traumatic event can make ambiguity in others areas of our lives less tolerable. As uncertainties add up, we want ever more certainty and the windows of our mind can shut and lock. Stress can lead to urgency... and that makes our minds inflexible as well. The thing is though... uncertain times really call for more flexibility. But the opposite happens... which isn't the best thing. What we really need to do is be calm and take time to make a decision. We need to be comfortable with uncertainty for a period of time... even if it is uncomfortable. But that isn't our first tendency. Our first tendency when faced with a grey area is to look for a solution. Our other tendency is to fix on one aspect of a complex and shifting reality.