How would your life be different today if you foreknew the outcome of your efforts? If you knew with certainty in advance how things would turn out, would that make any difference in your behavior and attitude today?
Think about it. If you were a part of a group of four working on a project and before it was even chartered, your boss or teacher told you, "No matter what, this project will be a success and each group member will get their equal share of credit." You might be a hard charging go-getter, or a take it easy type, but upon that news, do you think that would change anyone's attitude? The hard worker may think, perhaps I can take slightly fewer risks, or cease my strivings when things get tough if we're going to win anyway. The slow roller might slow their roll to a dead stop. In this scenario, in what way would it possibly help to have that information?
We'd never bring a spear, let alone bother to invent one, on an expedition if we were assured that we'd come home with a kill. But what if we were in such a fantasy? Would we be better off in a universe of perpetual and coherent accomplishment free from the risk of pain and suffering? I'd image it would abate a sure amount of worry and ease could become a new way of life. What's wrong with that?
What's wrong with a pile of dry seeds, forever safe from the pain of sprouting?
Not knowing the outcome, entering an assignment with some level of risk puts our guard up. We put in diligent work to make sure we are as prepared as possible for whatever may come. In other words, we use our heads to plan, think critically, and light up the neurons in the part of our brains that we don't share with the animals.
An elementary teacher of mine said something to me once that I thought plainly depressing. Taking the test adds nothing to your education. For the rest of the afternoon, I was struck with this profound thought and started to question the purpose behind the entire enterprise. But even in my pre-adolescence, it didn't take me long to understand the point. It's the studying, the struggle to learn the concepts in a safe space, the toiling for understanding that most fired my prefrontal neurons, that set me on a trajectory of growth.
But sometimes things don't go well. Sometimes the woes of life pile up; the commentators portray our chaotic world as just that, nothing but doom in sight. And not for no reason! So do we deceive ourselves in our labor, thinking that "it's all worth it in the end" when sharp stones and baneful briers fly at our efforts? How do we have hope in this nebula, in this uncertainty about whether things will actually be okay or not?
That is the great mystery of this pain-filled universe we find ourselves. Either it is truly a complete mystery, the test at the end of the semester might just be a consuming fire that only returns us to our dust, or the mystery is simply the nature of the path toward okay-ness. If the ladder, a deep mystery it is indeed. How could we possibly reconcile a drunk driver destroying a family, a mad man opening fire in a public square, an innocent child abandoned in the cold, a blameless servant-king whipped, spat on and left to hang by his pierced wrists to suffocate on a dead tree?
