From a young age, we almost invariably learn that in life, nothing is certain, that there are forces outside our control whose behavior we cannot reliably predict. My son learned this a couple of years ago when he broke his ankle one game into the playoffs of the baseball season and had to watch, as a mere spectator, his teammates win the championship game – a game that he had fully expected all season long to play in as the team’s starting shortstop, should it get there. This year, my daughter had to accept that we won’t be going to Disneyland to celebrate her ninth birthday as we had planned for many months, as the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc in all aspects of our lives.
I have certainly had my share of experience with things that did not go as planned, expected, or predicted, in virtually all facets of life. Perhaps, though, nowhere is the general uncertainty in this world more prominently showcased than in the financial markets, around which most of my professional career revolved. In the financial markets their participants, as collectives, continuously process available information about the past and the present, make projections into the future, put large sums of money at stake, and react, often quite abruptly, to how things unfold relative to those projections. It is a perilous enterprise to wrestle with the uncertainties and try to anticipate the courses of events they chart; consistent success is exceedingly elusive, and it is well documented that most money managers do not outperform their benchmarks and the majority of day traders fail to make a profit.
Yet there is something seductive about the business of trying to make something comprehensible out of the uncertain, and it has not as much to do with predicting what the future “is likely” to hold as with what one feels the future “should” hold. It is a sense in which one is led to form a belief about the future based on internal and external inputs, synthesized through the very core of what makes a person a unique thinking, feeling, and conscious being. Thus formed conviction one has about phenomena the unfolding of which is obscured by uncertainty is not merely a conjecture or a prediction; it is a purposeful product that leads to validation of our particular form of existence.
Convictions, of course, often reflect the realities of the future no more accurately than random predictions. But convictions can drive us, act as sources of motivation and fuel. Whereas predictions are hindered by uncertainty, convictions are solidified because of uncertainty. Evidences to the contrary may cause us to revise predictions; they cause us often to dig deeper in our convictions.
Like many qualities that give humans our distinct place in this world, convictions can propel and elevate us, but they can also spell the doom, driving us to ruin. But convictions in the face of uncertainty are worth having if one is to live a full life, touching all of the outer reaches of what makes our brief visit to this universe real and meaningful. The ultimate prize would be to have convictions but not have them turn into dogmas – it is a fine line, to be sure, but many things worth achieving in life are.