The Powerful Art of Negative Capability

In 1902, a 19-year-old cadet in an Austrian military academy was silently becoming a bystander in his own life.

Franz Xaver Kappus felt trapped. On the track for a life as a military officer, but unsure if he wanted it in the first place. His heart felt pulled in a very different direction.

When Kappus learned that one of his teachers had taught the famed poet Rainer Maria Rilke when he was a young man attending the same academy, he decided to act. Kappus sent a set of his poems to Rilke, asking for an honest assessment and guidance on his life ahead.

From 1903 to 1908, Rilke wrote a series of ten letters to Kappus, on solitude, love, doubt, and the question of how to live when you don't yet know who you really are.

Kappus never did publish his own poems, but in 1929, three years after Rilke's death, he published the letters in a single anthology, Letters to a Young Poet.

When I first read that beautiful passage, it immediately struck me as an echo.

Nearly a century earlier, another poet had given the same advice—also in a letter—and given it a name.

In late December 1817, the 22-year-old English poet John Keats penned a letter to his brothers, George and Tom.

Negative Capability is the unique discipline of embracing, rather than running from, uncertainty, doubt, and mystery.

Both Keats and Rilke understood the immense power of sitting in that state of unknowing.

The future feels more uncertain than ever before. AI is rewriting the rules of work. Previously safe tracks appear ripe for disruption. The conversations on fundamental societal change have subtly shifted from if to when.

But at the same time, our tolerance for that uncertainty has steadily declined. We carry the entire world's knowledge base in our pockets. Any question can be answered in mere seconds. Any doubt can be checked with a quick command. Any uncertainty can be neutralized.

A 2018 meta-analysis of 52 studies found that intolerance of uncertainty has been increasing for decades. The researchers propose that a dependency has formed: The more we reach for certainty through our devices, the less capable we become of living without it.

The reassurance-seeking behavior meant to calm us is exactly what's silently reinforcing an inability to bear the discomfort of not knowing in the first place.

In short, uncertainty is rising, tolerance for it is declining, and the downstream effects show up in ways we're only beginning to understand, including, many researchers argue, the rise in anxiety, polarization, and loneliness.

In his wonderful new book, How to Not Know, author Simone Stolzoff breaks down three certainty traps that we all fall into:

Comfort: The desire to stay where it's safe. Hubris: The belief that we know best. Control: The obsession with planning to perfection.

The traps will feel familiar. What's harder is the work of building your Negative Capability to escape them.

In my own life, I've found that the most useful way to develop this muscle is to keep a few questions close at hand.

Whenever I find myself leaping for certainty, falling into one of the three traps, I ask myself:

What are you trying to escape by answering this right now? The rush for certainty is often just a rush away from your fear of uncertainty. What might arrive if you sat with this for one more day? Sometimes the greatest breakthroughs come from just sitting in the discomfort a little bit longer. What would change if you stopped trying to figure this out? You don't have to figure everything out. Some things aren't meant to be figured. It's perfectly reasonable to let things remain a mystery.

With all of these, I try to remind myself of an important truth:

The one who can embrace the most uncertainty is the one who will eventually win.

P.S. How to Not Know is a great read. I am enjoying it. I think you will, too.