This week would have been my turn to give a short ‘thought’ at the end of band rehearsal and given that we are not having rehearsals at the moment I have been asked to deliver it at our zoom get together instead. This is a new experience!
The given subject is “Discovery” and the verse that is underpinning this week’s thought is :
Proverbs 3:13 – Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding
What an appropriate verse for these days…. I think I could have filled all the time available for this zoom get together with thoughts on this subject – but I will try to be brief!! However, here in the blog I can let things run a bit wilder!!
I will focus, however, on just one aspect of wisdom that I think we all need and that – unfortunately – many who ought to be embracing it are failing to do so. We are all – and by all I don’t mean just this band group, I mean humanity as a whole – for the most part unnerved by uncertainty – some more than others. I know people who need to have the next few days, weeks, months planned out well in advance so that there are few ‘surprises’. For that type of person any sort of uncertainty is terribly damaging to their mental health.
Yet – here we are in the middle of a situation that is the mother of all uncertainties!
Then again – even before covid-19 appeared – none of us could actually KNOW what the future would bring – we might have been reasonably sure about the next minute – or five minutes – but as time stretched out into the future our ability to predict what would happen assuredly diminished. Regardless of that – WE HAD A PLAN!!
As long as that plan was working out we were all reasonably happy – we could even deal with (some better than others) small deviations from that plan – but woe betide anyone or anything that got in the way in any significant sense – and, if something completely unexpected came along – well now we were all over the place with no idea what to do next.
The virus, in a big way, upset many people’s plans and they are all feeling a bit lost in one way or another as a result. The way they react, however, varies widely – some just “accept” it whilst at the other end of the scale some “rage” against it. Regardless – the issue is “WE DON’T KNOW” what to do next – we are facing uncertainty – and how we deal with it is important. We have to “gain understanding” of the uncertainty.
It is clear in many ways that we are certainly not alone in having to deal with uncertainty – I was just watching a coronavirus Q&A on the TV and people had lots of “good” questions which the “expert” was replying to with variations on “I hate to say this again but we just don’t know” – which I think is very brave of him.
My previous blog entry focused on the common problem faced by journalists and politicians – they have to talk about things that are outside of their expertise. In this entry I am casting things a bit wider in that there is lots that is simply unknown in this situation. Those in authority have a difficult job on their hands in this respect – they cannot give a good answer to assuage the uncertainties in their listeners. Unfortunately – too many of them seem to be overkeen on making up an answer that seems plausible (sometimes) and holds out at least a glimmer of hope of more certainty.