Certainty

Wandering through a book of quotations I came across these two:

“A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.”  David Foster Wallace

“It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and end up as superstitions.”  T.H. Huxley

It occurs to me that those help explain our (presumptuous, I know) collective anxiety in these pandemic times as we are being shown with glaring clarity how “wrong and deluded” we have been on some of our “certainties,”  (e.g. I have to hop on a plane and fly cross country to be at that meeting), how easily “heresies” (e.g. working from home) can become “normal” on their way to becoming (?) superstitions.  Did we ever really “need” the handshake?  Spectator sports?  Music concerts?….

Interesting times, for sure.