Sure Enough

Assuming I understand it correctly – a very big assumption – if anything certain can be derived from the intellectual achievements of the past century, it is that nothing is certain. In fact, there is even a “Law of Uncertainty” – which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but which is apparently now accepted by all good physicists. I won’t even attempt to state it here, except to say that it seems to me a reverse of the message of Frank Sinatra’s song about “Love and Marriage,” which was that “You can’t have one without the other.” In this case, what you can have are the position and the momentum of a particle – but you can’t have both at the same time. Since everything that exists consists of particles, that makes the entire Universe a mass of uncertainties.

That may not scare you – although within little more than a decade after the declaration of this “Law,” it somehow made possible the development of the atomic bomb.

But it leaves us poor critters – whatever we are – wondering just how to live, while sliding down a big question mark. And in particular – at least in the short term – what can we consider more or less certain? Yes, we’ve all heard about death and taxes – an expression that’s often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, though he did not originate it. (So, if you always thought he did, there goes a certainty in itself.)

But much more certain – according to all the most popular songs – is LOVE, of which the only true kind lasts forever. But that word – “forever” – has, for me anyway, lost some of its pizzazz, since it started to be used by the U.S. Postal Service on their stamps, in what I would call a very misleading way – as if anything issued by a bureaucracy could be guaranteed to last past the
next election.

Maybe we will have to stop using that word, or even thinking in those terms, in favor of something a little simpler. There is available, as an alternative, the idea of being “permanent,” which any dictionary will tell you means “long-lasting,” but on an indefinite basis. “Forever” never ends. “Permanent” does. You just don’t know when – but not soon. “Permanent Press” should last the life of the garment; and a “Permanent Marker” should make a mark that lasts as long as whatever you make the mark on.

But probably the most popular use of that term has been in connection with human hair. An enormous number of people, mostly women, all over the world, have been dissatisfied with the natural condition of their hair, and, since the start of the last century, this has given rise to an enormous industry, offering methods, devices, and products to change it, in particular to create curls or “waves.” Hence the term “permanent wave,” often shortened to “perm,” connoting a duration of months. (Ironically people born with un-straight hair of different kinds have, for just as long, sought ways of straightening it.)

But isn’t there anything we can be really sure of anymore? Four centuries ago, it was René Descartes who left with us the immortal words which probably say it all as well as it can ever be said: “I think, therefore I am.” The only thing anybody can ever be truly certain about in this world is that they are alive. When they stop knowing that, they cease to exist.

But we do still have the expression – “Sure as Shooting” – implying the reliability of firearms, a sentiment even today prevalent in a large segment of the American population. But we also speak of a “Flash in the Pan,” which is not widely known also to be firearms related. Most people who hear or use it probably think it comes from the Gold Rush era, when sifting water from a stream in a pan might or might not produce some genuine specks of gold – the “flash,” of course, being misleading, and giving rise to false hopes. But this expression actually goes back much farther than that, to the time when muskets had to be loaded and fired by means of igniting gunpowder in an adjoining “pan.” If the attempt for some reason proved faulty, then, instead of a shot being fired, it had merely produced a “flash” in
that pan.

So, how much certainty are we left with about anything? Somehow we have enough (most of us, usually) to get out of bed. Isn’t that enough?