Yehia Elkersh

I have a confession to make: 

I don’t have all the answers to life’s pressing metaphysical, moral and social questions. At the tender age of 22, I don’t even know the answer to the easy questions — like what color tie I should wear to my graduation dinner — let alone the urgent ones — like what awaits us as we enter adulthood. 

For years, I wrote biweekly columns for the News on everything from Greek life to international affairs, and proffered simple solutions to complex problems. My success was mixed, at best; some of my opinions were wrong, some oversimplified, all of them overconfident.

I know I’m not alone in my overconfidence. As Yalies, we feel the confidence and need to provide a simple answer to every question. Ancient animosities are flaring in a far-off corner of the world? Here’s an infographic to explain it all. A pandemic interrupts the semester? Here’s a petition with the only acceptable solution. Disagree with a speaker invited to campus? Boycott them. 

Stand on the right side of history, they say. Become a social media activist. Sign our open letter. Fall in line.

But we lose so much as intellectuals, as students and as seekers of the truth when we reject nuance, overlook the good-faith beliefs of others and abnegate our responsibility to think as individuals. Our time at Yale can give us a taste of contemplative life, as we are surrounded by the greatest minds in every field and other curious young people. If we were willing to embrace our own lack of answers, we could learn so much more about the world, and in turn, about ourselves.

Great thinkers from across the ancient world have encouraged us to understand the limits of our knowledge. Plato recorded Socrates as saying “I know that I know nothing.” In Book 2 of the Analects, Confucius says that “when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it — this is knowledge.” 

Acknowledging our limitations as thinkers is rare because it is so difficult. The world is a frightening place — filled with people we have never met, acting for reasons we do not understand, under principles we do not share. The allure of totalizing ideology comes from its promise to illuminate everything. And so we latch onto the beliefs of others, instead of taking the time to develop ideas ourselves. 

But in the process of solidifying our views, we forget the value of uncertainty. A friend of mine, a rabbi who has guided more than one generation of overconfident Yalies, recently told me that we often see uncertainty as a sign of weakness, when it is actually a strength. When we are uncertain, we listen to each other, we debate and discuss in good faith and we learn to independently build our beliefs in a world filled with dogmas. In the end, uncertainty makes us better, more nuanced thinkers.

In a few days, my classmates and I will receive freshly inked diplomas in the mail, to be displayed on our walls and flaunted in our offices for a lifetime. It is easy to misunderstand what our diploma means. Graduating from Yale does not mean that we have full mastery over our chosen fields, or that we are moral paragons, or that we know the right way to seek the Good Life — even if you took the class. Instead, our liberal arts diplomas signal that we have the tools to seek these answers. We have gained an appreciation of the scientific method from our physics and biology courses, reverence for rationality from our logic classes, an appreciation of the sublime from our humanities courses and the skills to speak and write coherently from our seminars. Our task now, as we leave this cloistered place, is to put those tools into practice and come up with our own answers to life’s important questions. 

Find friends who disagree with you in fundamental ways, and argue with them ferociously — you’ll find that you are more tolerant of dissenting views if you care for the people who hold them. Read widely, including opinions and perspectives different from your own. Never be afraid to challenge an ideology or orthodoxy — but do it in person, not on social media. 

Embrace uncertainty. Acknowledge what you do not know. Keep learning. I know I will.

Isaiah Schrader is a graduating senior in Benjamin Franklin College. Contact him at isaiah.schrader@yale.edu.