Isabel Ferreiro
“The only thing that is certain to us is uncertainty”.
“What will happen in the world —and, therefore, to each of us— a year from now? We don’t know. The future is, by definition, uncertain. And since, as I just said, for human beings, to live is fundamentally to live in or be part of the future, the root of human existence is the awareness of uncertainty. That is why I find the defiant and somewhat swaggering motto of that 15th-century Burgundian knight so beautiful, which says: ‘Rien ne m’est sûr que la chose incertaine,’ ‘Nur das ist mir sicher, das Unsichere,’ [‘Only uncertainty is certain to me’]. A beautiful statement from a warrior who finds joy in the sheer chance that is battle”.
Man has the “painful awareness that tomorrow one thing may happen to us as readily as the other”. “The human condition is substantial uncertainty”: not knowing what will become of him in the very next moment.
Ortega, always leading us to accept our circumstance in order to save ourselves, today leads us to keep our feet on the ground—even if that means firmly planting our feet in insecurity. And the fact is, “wherever man sets his foot, he always treads upon a hundred paths. Life is a perpetual crossroads and constant perplexity about the path we will take.” Furthermore, “no human achievement is permanent”.
Therefore, embracing uncertainty is a prerequisite for salvation. Thus, Ortega sees that “everything of value that man has created arose inspired by his insecurity,” from its true ground: the uncertain. “The fate of culture, the destiny of man, depends on our always keeping this dramatic awareness alive at the core of our being and, like a murmuring counterpoint in our very depths, truly feeling that only insecurity is certain for us”.
“This awareness of radical perdition or loss must remain alive in all of us, and we must not cowardly blind ourselves so as not to see it, for only that desperate sense of loss can stir in us the saving reaction”.
“Life is our reaction to the radical insecurity that constitutes its very substance. That is why it is extremely dangerous for man to find himself excessively surrounded by apparent certainties. The awareness of security kills life.” For if “everything of value that man has done, he has done because he felt lost and, as it were, without remedy”; conversely: “all his misfortunes and disasters have always stemmed from the fact that one day he believed himself to be too secure”.
But “we usually shy away from feeling that terrifying pulse that makes every sincere moment a tiny passing heart; we strive to gain security and desensitize ourselves to the radical drama of our destiny, pouring upon it custom, convention, and cliché —all forms of chloroform”.
“Ten centuries of cultural continuity bring with them, among not a few advantages, the great drawback that man believes himself to be safe, loses the thrill of shipwreck, and his culture becomes increasingly burdened with parasitic and linphatic work. For this reason, some discontinuity must come about to renew in man the sensation of loss, the very substance of his life. All the floating aids around him must fail; he must find nothing to cling to. Then his arms will once again move salvifically. The awareness of shipwreck, being the truth of life, is already salvation. That is why I believe only in the thoughts of shipwrecked people”. “Jesus put it divinely: «Only he who loses himself will find himself»”. “The one who does not truly feel lost is inexorably lost; that is, he never finds himself, never encounters his reality”.
Today, this awareness of insecurity, as Ortega describes it, is adopted as a strategy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. Army War College coined the term “VUCA world” to describe the new world: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. This mindset has spread to the business world and psychology. Taking into account the constant change, uncertainty, and complexity of everything that happens —as well as being flexible, adapting quickly to the unexpected, and making the most of adversity— is the trendy quality known as resilience.
“It is, therefore, beneficial that (…) we are surprised by the realization that we do not know what will happen tomorrow”. Accepting insecurity means living authentically and saving ourselves: being certain in the uncertain.
Works cited: Introduction to the Present (1928); The revolt of the Masses (1930); Goethe from Within (1932); Self-Absorption and alteration (1939); Man and People [1939–1940 Lecture Series]; Historical Reason [1944 Lecture Series]; “Goethe Without Weimar” (1949); [Second Lecture on Goethe at Aspen] (1950); “The Stimulus of Uncertainty” (1951).
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