There was a moment in my mid-20s when I realized that I might not have my own opinions about anything.

A lifelong people-pleaser, I’d become adept at absorbing the ideas and mores of the people around me. On a superficial note, this was manifested when I went to a summer enrichment program in high school with many students from Southern Virginia and returned home one month later with a pronounced Southern accent. On a more serious level, I had lived two decades without really being sure of what I believed.

Looking back, I have compassion on my younger self. Having lived nearly twice as long now, I would never expect a 25-year-old to have completed the final draft of their life’s vision statement (and if they claimed they had, I’d give them a sympathetic pat on the head.) 

But back then, I assumed that a marker of maturity was having the answers to life’s questions figured out. If I was doing life correctly, I’d continue collecting fixed opinions until I arrived at some future point where there would be no more uncertainty, just clarity. To be an adult was to be sure.

That looks ludicrous when I put it in writing. But don’t most of us believe this, at some level? How does our culture deal with uncertainty? 

Click here to continue reading this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.