The Only Certainty is That There are No Certainties

Remember how completely in love you were with your first girlfriend or boyfriend?  How you absolutely knew that this thing you had would last forever?  Do you recollect the time you got your first job and knew that if you worked hard you'd rise in the ranks to eventually be part of the decision-making?  How that major you finally decided upon was going to be your life-long career?  Can you hear yourself vowing "Till Death Do Us Part"?

Once there were 'scientists' who thought they had proven beyond any doubt that black people had inferior intellects to white people.  Physicians who knew that putting leeches on someone would pull illness out of their bodies.  Astrologers who died in defense of the idea that the Sun revolved around the Earth.

When I was a kid, I was absolutely convinced beyond any reasonable debate that Killer Bees were coming and were going to sting us all to death.  I was unmovable in my belief that Satan was writing lyrics of heavy metal songs backwards to steal our souls.  I knew that the words were "The Heart of Rock and Roll is in Cleveland" instead of "...is still beating."

And, as you are probably wrong about almost everything you strongly belief to be true, I was dead wrong.  My certainty was decimated by time and truth.

In high school, I was terrified of Killer Bees. At the time, there was no Google or even a substantial gateway to the burgeoning Internet and all of our information came from that crazy thing called NETWORK TV. Now I had access to better news because my dad had purchased a giant satellite (seriously, it was as big as a 1975 Volkswagon Bus) and CNN had just debuted. And, for about a month in the Fall of my freshman year in high school, the top story was the migration of KILLER MOTHERFUCKING BEES from Africa.

I was transfixed. I watched the same reports three and four times to glean all the possible permutations of the incoming apocalypse by BEE. I listened carefully as the anchors told me how to protect myself and I went to school in heavy jeans, heavy boots, a scarf and a ballcap that I had stapled a fishing net to the brim. I walked around school for a week like that, fully prepared for the carnage and death that would accompany the migration of the KILLER AFRICAN BEES who swarmed in a giant clouds of angry, violent BEE rage and stung anything in the swarm's path to DEATH!

But there were no killer bees. At least not in Kansas. In fact, there isn't a single death attributed to the Killer Bees on record.

You Millennials so certain of the way things are and will be?  Probably wrong.   About most of it.  Gen Xers? Yeah, you're wrong about an awful lot, too.  Baby Boomers?  Wrong.

All of these things we are absolutely certain of, these beliefs we hold dear, jobs and relationships and causes, have at least a 75% chance of being wrong.  Hell, when I read through the pieces I wrote for the past eleven years, I find constant reminders of how wrong I have been over the years.

This is all not to say we shouldn't hold our certainties of things and be passionately in favor of ideas we espouse.  Rather, keep it in mind that time and truth may prove you dead mistaken and have just a tad of humility when recognizing such.

I'm lucky to remember to wear pants to work on a regular basis so I'm confident I'm lucky to be right at least 50% of the time.