Dealing with Uncertainty

Sendak understood that stories can be scary. He believed that we should all—kids and adults alike—experience stories that deliver encounters with all the emotions available to us; that scary stories are how we become prepared for any eventuality. Indeed, this is the very reason we need stories. We don’t do well with uncertainty, and so we seek out

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. ⁦@rorysutherland⁩ is a gift. https://t.co/SxLRGGpEJH

But you can’t optimize systems in a context that’s changing, especially if it’s changing in unpredictable ways. Removing inefficiencies when circumstances are as anticipated means that there isn’t much slack in the system to respond when the unanticipated happens. Optimization is intrinsically brittle , because it’s about closely matching the outpu

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The reduced degree of caring and tension about outcomes that mindfulness meditation promotes may also help you approach uncertain situations in the spirit of curiosity and exploration, rather than being overwhelmed and consumed by negative possibilities. You can move forward by thinking of uncertainty as a companion by your side, rather than an ene... See more

Poetry fearlessly enters the horizon of the unknowable, the fuzzy. It lives there. That is why it is so significant in an uncertain, threatened time like ours.

In unpredictable times, poetry leaves the safe, familiar ways of knowing and speaking and listens out into new forms of being and creating. It searches for new insights between the known, it fathoms the space between people, between us and the living world, between different ways of seeing and shaping the world. It listens for new ways of being tha... See more