CenterlineRight: Dealing with the Futility of Certainty in our Lives

Life is hard. You are dealt a hand at birth that you must play for the early years of your life; some get good cards, some get a shit hand. At some point…typically in our teens…the sum parts of our early childhood environment begin to shape the person we will become. We face social, moral, and ethical challenges that most of us are ill-equipped to responsibly deal with on our own. The lucky ones have a support system to lean on during these times. The not-so-lucky ones are isolated on their own island fighting for survival; they begin the tragic genesis of dealing with varying degrees of adversity in their unformed lives.

By the time we reach our mid-to-late teens, we are all toting some heavy luggage and our paths forward are coming into focus…sometimes clearly, sometimes cloudy. At this point, the perfect…or imperfect…storms of our past and present environs combine with our internal aspects of personal traits. This all blends in time and place to make us the man or woman we will eventually become. Perhaps it is true that we are not condemned by these hands we are dealt, and that we always retain the ability to rise above…or sink below…the positives and negatives that we accrue. But the simple truth is that by this time in most of our lives, we have passed through several forks in our journey’s roads and are well on our way to a life well-defined.

In many ways, the only certainties in our lives are the cycles of the sun, the bureaucratic nature of our government, and the fact that our time on this planet is finite. More and more, the everyday aspects of living are arbitrary and unpredictable. As a culture and society, I believe our nation drifts naturally in that direction due to the normal evolution of the species and our democracy; it is generational. But I would venture to say that two things occurred recently that have thrown that organic process into absolute turmoil.

One was the covid epidemic. Occurring when it did at the end of Trump’s first term as president, covid provided openings for all of those many folks possessed by Trump Derangement Syndrome to leap into and further expand the poisonous political divide between Republican conservatives and Democrat liberals. It created the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Joe Biden to run a bizarre basement campaign for the presidency and ascend to the White House. Much of the uncertainty and malevolence surrounding the political aspects of covid served to cement many of our partisan ills into deeply-rooted permanence…and they have only expanded in a malignant fashion since that time.

Another significant aspect of covid was the fact that many segments of our citizenry, from government down to school boards, used covid as an excuse to let their Karen Flags gloriously fly. They openly used covid as a subterfuge to put forth words and actions that were previously withheld or spoken only in selected company. It was an excuse to advocate for autocratic policies that had been dreamt about, but were never fully expected.

And much like the partisan divisions that I previously mentioned taking root in our people, these predominantly progressive ideals that were brought out of the deep, dark recesses of some fevered minds managed to find footholds in our everyday lives and are still thriving despite the passage of the epidemic, the transfer of controlling political power, and the obvious illustration of their blatant ridiculousness. It is regrettable to say this, but I suspect that we will be living with many of these bad trappings from covid for generations to come.

On top of this covid hangover playing out in our country, we are now experiencing the re-entry of Donald Trump unleashed…beholding to no one due to his inability to run for re-election. Trump is not chasing re-election; he is chasing his legacy. Using America as he would his business entity prior to his entry into politics, he has fully implemented the Trumpian chaos theory of management into all things USA. Policy-wise…this is not such a bad thing. It just so happens that his policy instincts are quite sound and he is moving this country in good directions as our president. Leadership-wise…this is not such a good thing. His childish, irresponsible, crude, and constant displays of ego, conceit, and arrogance feed the very progressive demons that daily torment him and guarantee that our nation remains in the eye of a political hurricane.

When we combine the cultural/societal covid earthquake and this partisan whirlpool with the incredible gains we are seeing in technology and the shrinkage of the world stage, we find ourselves in a kaleidoscopic world where nothing seems reliable, everything and everyone is suspect, and the virtues of trust and credibility are devalued to the point of non-existence. Just as many of you might…I worry about the future of my children and their children in this world of uncertainties. I grieve over the loss of things I hold precious and I am frustrated by the inevitable changes I must cope with in my everyday life. I suppose upon reflection, I should realize that the generational mysteries that I am concerned about are little more than repetitions of similar conflicts that have existed since the dawn of time. Perhaps the old saying is true about the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I do believe that this one thing is for certain. The speed and complexities of those changes are far greater now than they were for previous generations. The velocity of this planet’s evolution has revved up dramatically and it is continuing to gain momentum daily. We are hell-bent for something that is out there waiting for us. And though the quest for certainty is proving more futile by the day, it is abundantly clear that we have the choice to ride this roaring train forward into the unknown…or leap out the side door into oblivion.

I like to look at life as a line; a line that stretches from our day of birth to our last day on earth. In the natural flow of things, the beginning point is when we come kicking and screaming into this world. It then progresses through our youth and early adulthood; it extends with our careers, our families, and our retirements; and it completes itself with our demise.

There are two ways this line can be viewed…and lived. The first is as a horizontal line streaming from left to right across a blank sheet of paper. All the previous events mentioned are simply points or dots upon that line. If we can maintain a healthy perspective, we can mentally reference this line at any point in our lives and consider what is past and what is future; it is either behind us or in front of us. We can ponder the time we have been given and the time we likely have remaining. All of life’s highs and lows…graduation, job promotions, marriages, children, baptism…failures, bad choices, bad actions, personal tragedies, loss of loved ones…can be viewed as single dots scattered across this line, with trees and branches flowing downward or upward from each point. This introspection should remind us that these are not be all or end all moments; but simply the complications that come with living. They are the individual threads in a multi-colored tapestry.

Another way to view this life line is to see it as a circle…beginning at a single point (birth) and circling around a full 360 degrees back to that same point…death lying upon birth. However, this visualization leads to a somewhat different perspective upon living inasmuch as we are never proceeding in a straight line, but rather curving in a continuous fashion. Given the constant arch of this timeline, it is not so easy to see the time that has passed and what lies ahead. Times, places, and things are more muddled and not as defined.

Unfortunately, we oftentimes place directly in the center of this circle a dramatic event(s) that we allow to dominate and rule the lifeline that surrounds it. This effect is typically negative in nature and this center point not only poisons our past, but somehow works to sabotage our future. We can’t see past it because no matter where we are on our timeline, it is always right there staring outward at us. For some lucky few, this hub in the wheel of life can be an uplifting and positive moment or event that manages to inspire us in a life changing fashion…somehow elevating both our past and future.

Our childhoods, our parents, our schooling, our careers, our families, our friends…none of these episodes guarantee that certainty will ever abide with us throughout our lives. But for those who choose to see, there is a solution to this world’s unsolvable mysteries that is beyond doubt; that is the opportunity presented to us by our faith in God. He has given us His promise of love, forgiveness, and compassion…and the prospect of everlasting life. That is one certainty that is available to all…if only we will open our hearts and our minds to his words.

I am sufficiently challenged by managing my own life to refrain from giving out advice on living to others. But I will say this…If you choose to hue to a circular lifeline as opposed to the horizontal, put God at the center of your circle. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this action will qualify you as one of the lucky few. The Good Lord will not remove futility, uncertainty, and misfortune from our lives…but He will certainly help us cope with it.

Now…let’s move on to the news of the day. The end of Donald J. Trump’s fifth year as president is upon us. It has been a year full of partisan rancor, idealistic warfare, global conflicts, technological leaps and bounds, and…compared to the previous four years…it has offered up a hyper drive increase in the amount of actual policy substance. With the mid-term elections arriving in about ten months, there is no reason to expect any slackening in America’s political intrigue for the coming year: https://amgreatness.com/2025/12/21/trump-never-sleeps-but-the-media-keeps-dreaming/

America’s place in the world…what is it? What should it be? What will it be?

https://amgreatness.com/2025/12/19/trumps-christmas-gift-to-america-a-year-of-us-global-leadership-and-peacemaking/

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-2025-national-security-strategy-as-political-philosophy/

https://thefederalist.com/2025/12/17/the-wests-embrace-of-mass-third-world-migration-is-civilizational-suicide/

https://amgreatness.com/2025/12/14/norway-avoids-green-energy-quicksand/

https://americanmind.org/salvo/will-europe-ever-recover/

Peering into the future within our own borders…what stories and issues will we be following in the next year?

America’s energy sector…

https://amgreatness.com/2025/12/15/what-happened-to-the-climate-change-cult/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/12/ford-pays-the-price-for-electric-vehicle-investments/

America’s health care system…

https://reason.com/2025/12/15/obamacare-subsidies-cant-fix-a-broken-system-rand-pauls-bill-could/