The truth is, nobody knows what will happen. Humans are poor predictors of the future. Even with perfect vision, we can only see about three miles ahead due to the earth’s curvature. Poor lighting shortens this distance further. If our physical sight is so limited, how can we hope to foresee the future?

But in this modern, technologically advanced, science-dominated worldview, we think we can and are supposed to. As a lawyer, I am always asked, ‘What will happen? If they do this, what happens? If they do that, what will happen?’ and treated as some legal oracle. At work, I am constantly asked to predict the future.

To many, the future is merely a product of the proper calculation of past, present, and previously decided cases. It is discoverable with enough math, intelligence, knowledge and effort. The future is simply a sequential, logical, predictable development of the past and present. After reading all the documents I have to read, I can discern what the judge will decide and how he will decide.

‘Will I win, Encik Fahri?’

The truth is, I don’t know. Anything I say about it is a wild stab in the dark. I have had sure wins I never won. I had sure losses I don’t know how on earth I won. We don’t know everything. We cannot know everything. Our biology and time and space constraints limit our ability to forecast.

There is also a limit to what we know we know. There is knowing what we don’t know. There is not knowing what we know. Finally, there is not knowing what we do not know. I draw an analogy of what we cumulatively know and don’t know with known matter, which constitutes 15% of the universe, and dark matter, which constitutes 85%. Of that 15% knowledge, it is known to mankind. But only an infinitesimal fraction is ever known to me. And out of that bit I know, or think I know, there are too many unknown variables of varying significance and impact. There are too many invisible moving parts. And what I know is also subject to the distortions of our biology, the properties of chemistry and the vicissitudes of life.

In the face of all that, many of us claim to be able to forecast what’s coming. They claim this not because they can but because many desperate, fearful, and insecure people believe that some of us can know it, discover it, or have some relationship with the future that enables us to discern it. In short, there is a sucker born every second, and where’s demand, there will be supply. We are all making random guesses. The chances of us getting it right are random, too. We may be able to discern a shape, but we cannot know what it is.

Try this: Predict where you will be and how you will feel fifteen years from now at four o’clock in the afternoon. It’s difficult.

We believe in this ability to know the future because we are blessed with the power of imagination. We are blessed to imagine what could, should, or may be. We are blessed with the ability to imagine what’s not there, what should be there, or change the paradigm of our outlook on the world and others. But we are cursed to conflate our imagination with our belief that we can discern the future. Occasionally, they align; sometimes, most times, they don’t.

Because of my profession, I thought I could, should, and needed to know what would happen. I got into that habit because that question was asked of me relentlessly. Because I persistently had to answer that question, I fooled myself into thinking I could forecast my cases’ future, how people would behave, and how situations would turn out. I also fooled myself into thinking I was intelligent, sensitive, knowledgeable, blah, blah, blah, enough to do so.

There is a sense of confidence and cockiness that comes from thinking we know the future. But a lot of stress, anxiety and fear arises from thinking we know it, too. Because now that we know it, we also know we can lose it. So now we feel responsible for it. That drives us to preserve or engineer it, thinking, mistakenly, that we can; thinking, now, we own it. We become dismissive of alternate futures imagined by others. We are hostile to them, thinking the possible future ceases to exist by eradicating or ignoring them. We become defensive because we need to protect our ‘future’.

I want to reduce the amount of stress, anxiety, and fear I contend with. This is why I don’t care about forecasting the future anymore. I am tired of wrestling with the urges and emotions that come with believing I know what will happen. I don’t want to waste time and effort on the unknowable. I only wish to take the future as it comes, as it has always been.

After accepting that the future is an eternally shrouded mystery and that I will deal with it as it comes, a calmness of soul and peace of mind descends upon me. My outlook shifts from what should be to what could be, from this-is-going-to-happen to what-is-going-to-happen. Because I don’t know, curiosity is cultivated.

When we are so focused on what we think should be, we hermetically seal ourselves off from what could be, which may be a superior experience to what we expected. Staying open-minded about the future makes life interesting instead of tediously ‘predictable’.

As soon as I relinquish the vanity of knowing what happens, every moment shimmers with potential for an adventure and the bounty that comes with it—discovering what I didn’t know I wanted or needed and people I like. Real life becomes wonderfully compelling when I don’t know what comes next. I am riveted and excited to live each moment because I want to see what happens next. I know it may appear boring as hell to anyone else, but it doesn’t matter. What’s important is how it looks to me and not anyone else.

Not knowing gives me greater space for my imagination to explore. It imbues my imagination with courage, freedom and possibilities. So, relinquishing my belief in knowing the future does not mean I relinquish using my imagination to think about the future. I still need to do it professionally and personally; I simply do not seize upon any of them as the future and treat them all the same – entertainingly.

But the truth is, even though I don’t know the future, I know how it will end. For me, it is obvious. Dead, at some point, hopefully not so soon, and forgotten.

Beyond that, according to science, the sun will explode through our universe, annihilating the earth in four to five billion years. Again, according to science, in the further far-flung future, existence will end in a heat death of the universe, after which it will be devoid of even atoms.

But until then, let’s see what happens.