Searching for certainty won’t lead you to the truth — maybe.

Looking for certainty is about looking for control. Looking for the truth is about looking for absolute certainty.

Humans love certainty. We love knowing things, good or bad. We want to know if it’s going to be sunny tomorrow or if the traffic is bad on Wednesday nights.

As a student, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched myself and my classmates clamour at our teacher begging for the format of the upcoming test: Will it be multiple choice? How many points is it out of? How long are the long answer questions Miss? Are we talking long, or like, long? Even though frankly, none of this information would have made a difference.

Certainty gives us control.

Or at the very least, a sense of it. If we know something, good or bad, we can plan for it — or well, try to.

The media knows this.

This is exactly why we see click-bait titles like: “5 books that every CEO reads!”, “3 things that will guarantee a promotion!” or “4 tips to ace every interview!” everywhere.

All of these titles promise you certainty. Specifically, they promise you success, which is a pretty awesome thing to be certain of. But really, these articles are selling you “guaranteed” methods of gaining “control” and “mastery” over your life. This is why they’re so enticing.

But here’s the thing.

Certainty ≠ Truth

Those articles aren’t necessarily giving you the truth, so much as a feeling of control. This is why it’s important that when we read them, we don’t treat them as some holy rule book to life.

These titles not only attempt to sell you certainty, but they sell you over simplifications (which is probably why they appear so certain in the first place). Personally speaking, to make blanket statements, to generalize and ignore nuance will leave you further from the truth rather than closer to it.

Why?

Because the world is complicated.

Very rarely do we get to say that any part of life (especially when it comes to people) is certain or can be boiled down into a 3 step formula. Therefore, these articles ultimately leave you with a distorted view of the world rather than an accurate one. And when you finally realize the two views aren’t compatible, all you’re left with is frustration and confusion, wondering where you went wrong.

Isn’t pursuing truth and certainty the same thing?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe the pursuit of truth is a noble one. But it’s important to understand that while the pursuit of truth will lead to certainty, the pursuit of certainty won’t necessarily lead you to the truth.

When you pursue certainty, you aren't pursuing the truth. Rather, you’re searching for a feeling of stability and control. In other words, you’re desperate. You end up putting yourself in the most gullible position. You find yourself clinging to every word, tip or life hack out there that is promising you the key to some door in life.

That’s not how you get the truth.

Searching for the truth is not about finding something that makes you feel certain, it’s about finding something that is certain.

So how do you find the truth?

Finding truth ironically begins with skepticism. Skeptics aren’t easily convinced. They question, poke and prod at the information that’s presented to them. They place a burden of proof on the content they are consuming and check to see if it lives up to that burden.

Embracing the truth means embracing skepticism, and embracing skepticism requires you to fully embrace uncertainty.

I’ll leave you with an analogy.

Imagine life and its truths as a puzzle.

Searching for certainty is wanting to finish a puzzle, it’s searching for this feeling of completion and fulfillment. On the other hand, searching for the truth is about finding the correct puzzle piece. It’s about getting things right, not getting things done.

In order to find the truth, you have to be comfortable with uncertainty. You need to be comfortable with the idea that not every piece of information that comes your way will be able to fit into the “puzzle” of your life. Otherwise, you’ll end up shoe-horning every puzzle piece that you encounter where it doesn’t belong, and all you’ll end up with is an incomplete puzzle, with a heck of a lot more useless pieces. Simply put, you end up with a puzzle that just gets harder and harder to solve.

Don’t take anything I just said for granted though. I challenge you to be skeptical. Do you think I lived up to the burden of proof? Am I telling the truth?

I’ll let you decide.