SquarePeg Books

Doubts are hard.

I mean they are useful, they serve an evolutionary purpose. Doubt makes one give a second, more careful look at something. Doubt gives you reason to move cautiously, maybe take in a few extra details about the situation or your plans. Doubt may have saved an ancestor or two from becoming some sabertooth feline’s lunch.

We outlived the sabertooths. We slowly clawed and bit our way to the top of the food chain. Doubt helped a lot with that, too. It made us watch our backs, and inspired us to learn how to swim, we even learned how to stalk and hunt our own species (okay, maybe not the best example to use when trying to display positive evolutionary points, but roll with me here).

But it’s a damned nuisance now that we have fewer “be careful or be lunch” scenarios in the modern world.

Change is hard. Change is accompanied by uncertainty, which is a fancy word for doubt. Most creatures don’t like uncertainty. There are days when my son is confronted by a sudden change in schedule that he was not informed in advance about, or a procedural change in how the average day is going to work and suddenly it’s like his world is being destroyed before his very eyes.

Crying, tantrums, hiding under the bed, outright defiant denial are all to be expected should a change, no matter how small I think it is, pop up without proper warning and preparation.

I understand where he’s coming from on an intellectual level, but didn’t really sympathize with it until very recently. I don’t think there is anyone out there who wouldn’t say those reactions are more than a little irritating.  Telling him to pull himself together, get over it, suck it up (all motivational phrases my parents used) does nothing. Change must be presaged by fair warning, or the doubts eat him alive.

The last few months have sharpened my understanding on a more primitive level. I understand how it isn’t the logic of the situation that is messing with him, it’s the doubt. The calendar acted a certain way, the rituals happened at a certain time every day. The certainty of tradition, if you will, made the world a safer place in his mind.

I had to fake certainty before, for him. It’s called “adulting” because you don’t want the kids to know that you have no fucking clue what the hell you’re doing and you’re the one driving this damn bus.

It’s an easy illusion to live in. “My world has always been this way; a little rough, sometimes, but it’s generally a very secure place where nothing untoward or unfortunate happens.”

Until the unfortunate does happen and the illusion shatters and you cut yourself on the pieces trying to hold them together. After a while you realize the magic bubble isn’t going to exist ever again. Whether or not others accept that little tidbit is a different matter entirely.

They haven’t. I get the feeling they won’t. Not until it’s far too late to appreciate the illusion that was.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” they’ll cry as the nasty modern sabertooth tiger of situation X rears its snarling head.

“I did. But you didn’t want to listen.

“So I faked the certainty for you and for myself, so the doubts wouldn’t cripple us all.”