MOST OF us do our best to avoid discovering that we are only ordinary people, living in an indifferent world that has no conclusions for our randomly ordered lives. The harder we try to maintain the opposite, the more we fail to see how our illusions contribute to the problems we have. Mistakenly, we view ourselves as helpless victims of our pasts. Paradoxically, at the same time, we envision ourselves becoming the triumphant, powerful masters of our futures.
Living life as the ordinary people we turn out to be, we must eventually accept the shifting ambiguities of being both good and bad, wise and foolish, fortunate and unfortunate. Then comes a lifelong search to answer such questions as, “How can we depend on each other without expecting to be taken care of? When is it wise to trust the other, with what, and how much? What is the best way for us to manage our finally unmanageable lives?”
The tension between certainty and doubt propels us forward.