The test of ambiguity

...man always has to decide by himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows.

Why do you run away? What is hidden there – beyond the blurry images frantically moving, obscuring the view? Stand still and look past them, look into the centre. There what do you see? 

You see only ambiguity. Neither good nor bad, it’s only the feeling you have when you climb to a great height and you look down. Vertigo. You are dizzy. You want – in the most panic stricken way – to stay alive but at the same time you want to jump. You dream about it, you obsess about it and you can’t look down because of it.  You want to stop fighting, stop trying. You want the ambiguity of whether you can cling onto the surface of that high tower to end - and you want to do it in a way you can be certain of. Anything is bearable if it’s not a surprise.

But this is the lesser known test of life and it will not leave you alone. What do you do with your share of ambiguity? Make no mistake – as Beauvoir sets out in her Ethic of Ambiguity – it comes with freedom. They’re one indivisible package. You are free to create the meaning of your life and the meaning is unlimited. And yet you start in the mud as a worm, struggling, wriggling, turned blindly towards the sky but not knowing what you are reaching for. You do not know that ambiguity is the same thing as freedom and freedom the same thing as responsibility. And so you put it down.

Its unbearable, the ambiguous depths you can fall into, just like the dizzying heights from the top of that tower.