I’m perplexed as never before. This I did not expect.

Younger we envision progress – from bewilderment to clarity. Doubts that assail us will be put to rest. We will know – calmly – how to be.

Mostly our elders seem to have achieved that transition. Teachers tend to teach as if they knew.

Turns out our elders’ confidence was either folly or false. To bequeath doubt is an insidious inheritance. Kinder to pretend quietude, an eventual grace available to all.

Experience, in my experience, does not lead to certainty or thinking to comforting conclusions. Who knows for sure has stopped seeking, as exhausted migratory birds alight on scraps of flotsam to rest. We bunk with God when all other inns are dark.

Doubt is not a failure, though it disappoints. We’d hoped for peace. But peace depends on knowing one’s whereabouts. And our ground is always shifting, if we’re paying attention.

This is truer in modernity, with its remorseless change. Once upon a time one might dream of timelessness. Our village would always be what it was. The names of pastor, mayor, pharmacist, blacksmith might change but not their value or relation to the whole. That’s improbable today.

Uncertainty cripples contentment. All creatures, I suspect, prefer knowing where we are. We snuggle into our familiar beds. I shudder if a kitchen spoon is not where I left it: What’s going on!

Uncertainty breeds suspicion. That stranger might be “up to” something – how to know? We keep our distance from strangers, “playing it safe.” In Poughquag Jane and I recognize few of our neighbors, though we have lived here twenty years. Combative lawn signs suggest we can’t be too careful.

Distrust is contagious. We tiptoe through our time warily, “dukes up.” (The origin of this phrase is unexpected.) On guard, we’re jumpier, likelier to take offense. The surliness of voters in today’s so-called advanced societies is partly attributable to transience, loneliness. When I was a boy, we respected those in office – “I like Ike!” – and their official conduct mostly merited our regard. Imagine that!

My hunch is that humans will become less governable as our confidence corrodes. We’ll think the worst of those in charge, who’ll reciprocate our suspicions with nefarious behavior. “You can’t believe a word anybody says” is an unpromising prelude to a productive relationship.

Anxious, antsy, why not repose our trust in a Big Guy, who seems to know? All this bad news is more than we can take! Let’s just shut our eyes and pledge our troth.

The burgeoning of information and proliferation of voices paradoxically compounds our confusion. The more we know the less we know. My ignorance expands faster than my knowledge. I rely on various curators to thresh the endless data for what I most need to know, but how much can I rely on them! Fake news is no fiction, though hardly as prevalent as we’re supposed to suppose.

How to reclaim our confidence and calm? Show me the way to a quiet heart!

I’ve no map, no existential GPS, to point me to certitude. Fatalism is my shallow finale. With my meager powers and limited information, I’ll do my best to dope out our location, then slump helplessly into my impotence. Doing our best is the best we can hope for. I will struggle with all my might not to fall prey to false idols or the delusions of my tribe. Confidence is overconfidence: I must think for myself at all costs and keep open the gates of my mind. Perplexity’s permanence is the curse of modernity. We must keep searching – and never find.