Response to Laura's Blog.

Laura had a statement in her blog that I found interesting: "Only lies can save man from the opressive power of certainty." Maybe certainty is an oppresive power. I must be thankful, then, that I have never been certain of anything in this life.

Perhaps a quote would be appropriate here. This quote is from an artist's reflection on her artwork "The Ark," which I saw in the Duke University Art Museum many years ago. I was looking at colleges and was supposed to be getting interviewed or going on a campus tour, or something like that. Instead I hid in the art museum and sunned myself in the gardens surrounding it, and decided I didn't want to go to school just yet. Anyway, the artist was a Russian Immigrant who built an ark and filled it with the scrapbook of her life. I'm sorry I don't remember her name.

"It is one of the most fascinating endeavors and states; to be living still and yet not living . . . and to see this entire life as though from the sidelines, as though from some sort of height . . . And possibly this is one of the lightest, most wonderful states; without all feelings, without pain, exhaustion and uncertainty ahead, to see everything, to float above everything, and what's most important - to be relieved of your uncertain and long life, in which you are never sure of anything."

Perhaps the level of certainty in life depends on one's outlook. We seek lives that are either more or less certain. And who is to say which is the better path?