A guest posting by David Schatzky, a psychotherapist and former broadcaster, who has spent years observing the impact of ambiguity and the benefits of irony in the lives of human beings.
Most people seek certainty, but a more sustainable and sanity-preserving stance is to accept the inevitability of shifting sands, to embrace the unsettling reality that there are only imperfect resolutions to life’s challenges and to appreciate a multiplicity of perspectives. Without developing comfort with ambiguity and a capacity for irony, it’s easy to get locked into cynicism, despair, and no-win arguments about right and wrong.
Here are two illustrations. The first is apocryphal; the second autobiographical.
• Once a long time ago a rabbi met in his study with two neighbours locked in an intractable dispute. To make everyone comfortable, his wife came in with cups of tea for them all. The rabbi listened carefully to the first man. “My son,” he said, “you are right.” Then he turned to the other man, listened carefully to his argument and responded immediately. “My son,” he said, “you are right”. Unable to contain herself, the rabbi’s wife challenged her husband. “They can’t both be right.” “My dear,” replied the rabbi, “you are right, too”.
• Many years ago, depressed and discouraged, I lay with my eyes closed on my then-analyst’s couch and ranted at great length about how gloomy and hopeless my life was, how dark the future seemed, how impossible it would be to change anything and how my existence was an interminable vale of tears. With only a moment or two left in the session I paused, and the analyst said “Well, that’s one way to look at it”. I collapsed in laughter.
As Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel wrote, “Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos”.
Eric Koch’s new book, New Beginnings, was launched on September 20. The book is available from 
The uses of ambiguity: as NPR’s ombudsman, when confronted with an outraged, recalcitrant and often offensive listener, my best response was : “Sir, you could be right!”
We have fallen in a very black and white approach to life and humour in difficult situations is not even socially acceptable. What in the German language is referred to as “Galgenhumour” can get you in a lot of social censorship in Canada. In order to understand humour, a good command of body language is necessary, a skill we are rapidly losing.
2 immediate thoughts (neither certain nor ambiguous):
1. We’re taught from such an early age to leap to “the right answer”, to close down, to “win”. Years later we get Philosophy 101 at University, and file it away appropriately.
2. David Schatzky is very much clearer than Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel. Strange quote to pass on. And yet Karl seemed so certain about it.