July 6 | The Benefit of Every Doubt

Doubt is a very difficult roommate to live with.
 Even an act as simple as driving to the grocery store requires a level of certainty. The rules of the road. Gas in the tank. Where to turn left. All questions better not left up to randomness. 

That’s not even to push towards the more important elements of life: your work. Romantic relationship. Family. Art. All require certain certainties, a sense of which way is up, axioms you can take as, if not immutable, at least a somewhat solid foundation from which to build an existence. 

But then your friend doubt comes poking it’s way in. Shaking things around. Flipping the clothes out of the drawers your mind, turning the whole place topsy turvy. 

A very hard place to be. Or at least, a very hard place to stay.

But if you look closely, you might learn to see that you didn’t quite have everything organized the way it should have been. The neat divisions in your head, the differences in philosophies, arguments about religion, they were a little too neat. Sorted in drawers they didn’t belong in. Some things you thought once fit you perfectly you discover to be too large, too small, or just not quite the right pattern. 

So as much as a pain in the ass as it is…

You can learn to see doubt as the friend with benefits it really can be.… Read the rest