On Uncertainty (Part 3)

This is the final blog post on uncertainty. I didn't intend it to be this long - so many things have happened in quick succession that it took me a while to digest them.

This one, I am going to start off with a quote from my best friend - "We trust each other through the uncertainty of the past."

He recently got married and I traveled to his courthouse wedding a week ago to serve as his witness. He and I go back almost 7 years, and of those 7 years, it has been 5 years since we had physically seen each other. My relationship with him is very comical - when we first met, we strongly disliked each other and were almost always at each others throats. In fact, our math teacher Ms. Lacher, had to serve as a mediator for us to agree to a truce between each other before going on our annual math competition because we were placed in the same team! Now 7 years later, I am his witness at one of the most important days of his life.

Now, at request of the newly married couple, I can't post pictures just yet.

The day he and his wife chose to get married was the same day of my maternal grandparents anniversary- February 27th. Its a bit special because in February in the last week, my family has important dates that line up within 3 days of each other. My maternal grandmother's birthday on Feb 18, my birthday on Feb 21, my parent's anniversary on Feb 24, and Feb 27th, which now serves as my best friend's anniversary. In honor of my late grandpa, I signed the witness form with his fountain pen (almost 25 years old!).

Afterwards, when we were having dinner, I asked them how they managed to go through a long-distance relationship and find the courage to get married, and that's when he gave me the quote.

To be honest, my friend and I are not really known for coming up with deep statements, our convos are 60% crude jokes about one another. So, at first I just dismissed his statement - after all what is he talking about uncertainty of the past - the past is the only thing that is certain.

What got me to re-evaluate his quote, was me remembering a book I read for the first time almost 8 years go - 1984 by Georgia Orwell. 1984 for me is an interesting book, it shows the horror of unchecked totalitarianism, and especially the constant rewrite of the past. Winston Smith the main protagonist is a member of the outer party, and is assigned to work in the Ministry of Truth, where he edits documents based on the established party line. 1984 is scary because it shows a very real situation of what can happen, and the utter hopelessness of the novel combined with the incessant descriptions of party propaganda brainwashing people often hits too close to home! One of the striking ideas was if one can control the past, then one can control the present and hence the future - a idea subtly written in the party slogan War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.

But the reason I am talking about 1984 and my friends wedding in the same blog (which out of context seems absolutely inappropriate) is because both George Orwell and my friend are right, the most uncertain part is the past. Part of trusting another person is accepting their past, and whatever version it comes with.

In case, you are wondering what happens if the opposite is true, that if the past is always certain, than trust basically no longer exists. In fact, Black Mirror did an episode on this in s1e3 - The Entire History of You, where the entire history of a person is continuously being recorded by devices in their eyes. It drives the main character of the episode insane trying to strive for certainty in everything.

I think part of the reason why him and I remained great friends was that we were able to make jokes about what happened to us; we still argue about who was the bigger reason for our fights back in high school. We connect over shared experiences at ISB, and listen to each other's interesting backstories. At the end of the day, embracing the uncertainty in our past and exploring that through friendship makes it fun and interesting.

Overall, concluding the three part post on uncertainty, I think I can sum up some key things that I learned about uncertainty-

1. The laws of the universe dictate that we will always have uncertainty in the present, but the small moments in the present matter.

2. In those small moments, uncertainty about the future allows us to be human.

3. Finally, uncertainty about the past allows us to build a fundamental connection with someone else - in order to trust, one needs to have experienced uncertainty.