Don't try to understand everything

Someone asked the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, “Is there anyone richer than you in the world ?” Bill Gates replied, “Yes, there is a person who is richer than me.” He then narrated a story. “It was during the time when I wasn’t rich or famous. “I was at the New York Airport when I saw a newspaper vendor. “I wanted to buy one newspaper but found that I didn’t have enough change. So I left the idea of buying and returned it to the vendor. “I told him of not having the change. The vendor said, ‘I am giving you this for free.’ On his insistence I took the newspaper.

“Coincidentally, after two to three months, I landed at the same airport and again I was short of change for a newspaper. The vendor offered me the newspaper again. I refused and said that I can’t take it for I don’t have change today too. He said, ‘You can take it, I am sharing this from my profit, I won’t be at loss.’ I took the newspaper. “After 19 years I became famous and known by people. Suddenly I remembered that vendor. I began searching for him and after about 1? months of searching, I found him. asked him, ‘Do you know me?’ He said, ‘Yes, you are Bill Gates.’ “I asked him again, ‘Do you remember once you gave me a newspaper for free?’ “The vendor said, ‘Yes, I remember. I gave you twice.’ “I said, ‘I want to repay the help you had offered me that time."

"Whatever you want in your life, tell me, I shall fulfill it.’ “The vendor said, ‘Sir, don’t you think that by doing so you won’t be able to match my help?’ “I asked, ‘Why?’ “He said, ‘I had helped you when I was a poor newspaper vendor and you are trying to help me now, when you have become the richest man in the world. How can your help match mine ?’ “That day I realized that the newspaper vendor is richer than I am, because he didn’t wait to become rich to help someone.”

Things happen. We can remember that they happened in that pattern before and when it did, something happened. The story we tell ourselves about why something happened is our need to understand. It is the story that we tell ourselves that either makes us happy or makes us sad, not the events themselves. I am not unhappy that my brother is gone. I know he’s coming back. I don’t know that he’s all right, but that he’s gone doesn’t upset me. The dogs’ story, on the other hand, doesn’t have that explanation and in their story, he’s never coming back.

Because we have long enough memories to make connections between pieces of data and see a pattern. Seeing a pattern, we want a reason. This is common with animals as well. You see it in our dogs when my brother is away at night. They get depressed and hang around the door, expecting him to come home. If he doesn’t, one of them will howl off and on all night. She’s unhappy and his absence is her reason. She has a memory and she has expectations that he is failing to fulfill. What we don’t know is whether she understands that he’s coming back or is afraid that he’s never coming back.

I think that perhaps everything that understands cause and effect beyond the principle, “If yes, do this; if no, do that” and has the memory capacity to link the two needs a reason as to why the effect followed the cause. When you suffer from a condition known as being a young person. Alternatively, you suffer from simply having a strong sense of intellectual curiosity, which is certainly not a bad thing. Considering the anxiously self-conscious tone of the question, I will assume you are fairly young and that my first prediction above is correct. If I’m wrong, leave a comment and I’ll adapt my answer accordingly.

You are not strange. You are not wrong. You are not being ‘awkward.’ You are just curious. And that curiosity throws you for loops when you start to think about big questions. You are concerned that there is something wrong with this. Most people lose this curious spirit in adolescence. They fear - like you - that their curiosity is a sort of pathology, or they feel they are imposing on those whom they ask question to. They learn to be ashamed of their curiosity, so they learn to repress it. So by the time they are twenty they are much more ‘chilled’ and don’t think particularly inquisitively any longer. What a tragedy.

Part of the youthfulness of your curiosity is a need for certainty. It is a desire to just understand everything. This is the one aspect of curiosity that is somewhat immature. Let me explain. In real life, complete certainty is extremely hard to come by. Armies invade enemy territory on mere suspicions. Emergency surgeries are done out of urgency even when the exact problem is ill-defined. People rush into commitments (jobs, relationships, financial responsibilities, etc.) without knowing fully in advance what will happen. This is something you learn with time. And there is no other way to learn it.

I can tell you from now till tomorrow about how absolute certainty cannot almost ever be achieved, and you can agree with my reasoning, and you can think of examples where you experienced this for yourself, and you can talk about this harsh reality with everyone you know, but you will still thirst for certainty. Your passion for absolute clarity and predictability will not wane. Not yet. This unbounded need for certainty can be tamed by only one thing. And you’re not going to like what it is. That thing is time. It is time and it is experience.

As you pass through the decades of your adult life you will be confronted again and again with this truth, the fact that absolute certainty is never a fair expectation, and eventually this reality will sink in. You will realize the need in everyday life to be a believer. To believe in a god, perhaps, but more so to believe in other people - in your employer, in your government, in your loved ones, in your medical caretakers. You will realize that these forces combine constantly and endlessly to determine your fate, and your input is but a trivial cog in this system of reality. You will realize the frailty of your own life and your own reality, hopefully without needing a tragedy to teach you that lesson.

People learn this lesson from cancer, from car crashes, from kidnappings, from economic downturns. And the lucky ones learn it by simply living life with open eyes, realizing always the tenuousness of everything, and that only a heck of a lot of faith can get you through life. Because absolute certainty is an impossible dream. Please do not think I am condescending to you. I am taking your question completely seriously, and am simply telling you what I feel you must hear. Do not ever lay down your curiosity. If you use it well it may be the most powerful tool you will ever possess.

Keep demanding absolute certainty, but do not be surprised to find that it eludes you. Time will teach you its lesson sooner or later, and then you’ll know firsthand what I mean by all of this. As I said, you can’t really appreciate this yet. But you will. In my experience, the more you learn to look for the inevitable uncertainties of life the more (and the faster) you learn to see their abundance and ubiquitous. When you see news reports about natural disasters, calmly notice that this could happen to you. When you see an ambulance rush by, realize without being startled that you could end up in there without advanced notice. When you are gripped by the fear of deeply connecting to someone, of being vulnerable and reliant, embrace this feeling as an essential ingredient of life. If all goes well, there will come a day when you greet uncertainty not as a cruel foe, but as an old, familiar friend. It will be not the bitter reality, but rather the spice that makes life taste ever so just right. Cheers!