The Uncertainty of Certainty

Learning to trust what we don't know.

This morning, I was sketching a new kitchen layout, nothing formal, just letting my hands move the way they have for thirty years. It felt easy and familiar.

And that's what got me thinking. How often I reach for what I already know—not because I love it, but because it feels safe. There's a part of me that believes if I stick with the familiar, I'll succeed. That past proof equals future return.

But life doesn't work like that. Familiar isn't the same as certain. And certainty isn't the same as truth. I could start another cabinet company tomorrow. I've done it before. But there's no promise it would thrive again. We trick ourselves into thinking familiarity guarantees success, when really it just quiets our fear—for a while.

What's more unsettling is how many things we treat as certain—relationships, plans, routines, even tomorrow. Two years ago, I would've bet the farm that Megan and I would grow old together. But here I am, living a different life. She's gone.

We plan vacations. We book meetings. We count on the predictable. All with the quiet assumption: "Tomorrow is guaranteed." But it isn't. Certainty is one of the most convincing illusions we live under.

And what do we do in its absence? We wait. We stall. We tell ourselves, "I'll move forward when I'm sure."

But we're never really sure—and maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is to move anyway. To create something new in unfamiliar territory. To say yes—not because success is guaranteed, but because life is too sacred to be lived on repeat.

That’s where I’m standing now—at the edge of what I know, looking out toward what I don’t. And I can feel the old pull—back to the safe, the repeatable, the proven.

But I’m trying to listen instead to the quiet voice that says:

Just because you’ve done it before doesn’t mean you have to do it again.
And just because something’s uncertain doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

So here’s to building something new. Not because you're sure how it ends—but because you’re alive enough to begin.