I won’t make up my mind

I think I’ve made up my mind that I won’t ever make up my mind.

I don’t really have strong opinions on many things. Perhaps the curse of trying to keep an open mind is that it is filled with contradictory ideas and calls for weighing up all sides of the argument. This is inconvenient, because here I am writing opinion pieces for Delta, and doing my PhD, supposedly on my way to becoming an expert on my topic. This often makes me think that my uncertainty is a weakness.

Perhaps it is also why, if you have read my other columns, I tend to weave together the thoughts and sentiments of others more prolific than me. I borrow words from poets, philosophers, researchers, because they can often summarise the ineffability of my existence better than I can.

Other people’s ideas make my own less lonely, even as they make them less certain. I notice this more as I have grown older, moved around, and returned home. My parents and I observe the same world, the world they brought me into, and we see different things. This makes sense: we have lived different lives, surrounded by different assumptions. It is just strange to realise that what is obvious to me may be absurd to someone I love.

The same happens in politics. In the US, being red or blue seems to dictate how a person is allowed to think or feel. Luckily, this seems less extreme in The Netherlands, though nowhere are we free from echo chambers. Every pocket of life has its own atmosphere, things that are not argued for so much as breathed in. A different opinion can feel so disconcerting precisely because it disturbs the air you had forgotten you were breathing.

Not every opinion deserves equal weight. Some are cruel, lazy, or poorly informed. Still, I wonder how often I confuse disagreement with ignorance, or difference with danger.

Recently, I read about the first case (in Dutch) in the Netherlands of life termination for an incurably ill young child. My first bodily reaction was horror. I cannot imagine anything worse than the death of a child. When I looked closer, I saw much more. Unbearable suffering, parental love, medical responsibility, mercy. It is all still terrible, but it’s just not so simple anymore.

Climate action cannot wait. The latest heat wave makes that clear enough

I believe this is what education should do: teach us better how to cope with or even embrace uncertainty. TU Delft is built around solutions, and of course decisions need to be made. Climate action cannot wait, the latest heat wave makes that clear enough. The trick, I suppose, is learning to act without mistaking action for certainty. To make decisions, while remembering there were other ways. To carefully listen to other points of view, especially if they are different from your own. To let new information embarrass you a little.

As is my fashion, I will quote a poet. Simone Weil wrote: ‘It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves’. I like to think of these columns as records of that process. Attempts at becoming clear to myself.

So here is my thesis for now: I am still thinking.