We like the prediction business because as human beings, we dislike uncertainty.
If we can know what’s going to happen next, we feel a sense of control.
If we know what’s going to happen next, then we put trust in our own ability and efficacy in order to “fix” whatever problems might arise.
If we know what’s going to happen next, then we feel as if there is a chance to gain safety and security in an insecure and chaotic world.
Psychics, soothsayers, and seers; analysts, pollsters, and pundits; politicians, priests, and professors; well-meaning prognosticators, all.
But see, the tension that lies deep down is between the soothing predictive words of person standing in front of us (or the person on our computer based devices) and the suspicion that we have, resonating from a deeper place of intuitive knowledge, that such predictions are false.
But since we can’t know the future, but we can prove the present, we buy into the lull of certainty that prediction gives us, and we err on the side of prediction, rather than dancing with the uncomfortableness of uncertainty.
Patience.
Being aware of, and secure in, the present.
Letting go emotionally of events that happened in the past.
Not needing to be in control of everything, all the time.
These are emotional skills that, once honed to a fine point, make human beings less susceptible to the predictions of well-meaning prognosticators.
Because the only thing that is guaranteed to be knowable, is that tomorrow will come, no matter how we feel about it.
