Certainty is the Enemy of Enchantment

Do you remember when the world was mysterious?

Perhaps, to remember, you must think back to the time of your childhood.

In childhood, we are brought from place to place, and life largely functions outside the dictates of our control. There is routine, there is predictability. But there also lies mystery and wonder. Without the capacity to discover in advance all there is to know about a place, or a person, a child must gaze through the fence around their yard and wonder what lies beyond. They wander along on outdoor walks, discovering as yet unseen flowers, marveling at the delicate beauty in the irises and the Dutchman’s breeches. The child does not know that the flowers have already been named, but creates their own name, story and lore to explain the mystery of beauty before them.

Perhaps you did not have a childhood with pockets of mystery. I am sorry, if that is the case. Maybe we must think back to the pre-adult years of fascination with the opposite sex, and other groups of people and places beyond our ken. The mysteries of young adulthood are uniquely lovely and enticing. But, then, I think most of that mystery has been scrubbed from the world in our age of abundant information. Any person who can operate a phone or computer can immediately find out what the opposite sex looks like without clothes, and, further, what they look like when engaging in the private activities of unclothed adults.

But this is not an essay on smartphones or pornography. My meaning in prompting the remembrance of mystery is in drawing your eye towards its enemy: certainty. Certainty can be a delightful thing to experience. What child does not love a predictable daily routine - in which they may exercise their energies towards each item in a finite manner while remaining satisfied in the knowledge of certain events yet to come? Yes, its quiet time now but soon we will go out to play. No, you can eat the cookies after lunch. As adults, much of our sanity in coping with the modern world is derived from routine. The work week ends after 5 or 6 days. We know we can eat ice cream in the evening before bed, if we want. An exercise schedule ensures we get the activity our bodies need. In times of stress, we crave certainty as an antidote to fear or worry.

But so much certainty in knowing what will happen, what things will be like, where they will be, eventually strangles the human desire for mystery and wonder. And while certainty can be immediately comforting to our worried selves, it is mystery which ultimately provides a healing, nourishing balm for the soul. Besides, it’s pretty boring and sad to always know everything in advance. To illustrate this, I will share an example from my own life.

As I write, I am on a little summer holiday with extended family at a place we’ve been visiting for twenty years. I am sitting on the porch of a cute refinished lake house, a stone’s throw away from the edge of Lake Michigan. We’re having a lovely time - the local beach is a 2 minute walk from the house. One can walk into town and buy an ice cream cone, coffee, or interesting used book from the little shops. We’ve been sailing, swimming, paddling, and hiking. The home is ideal for our group of family members - chosen by the number of bedrooms, square footage, and proximity to the water. What more could we want?

Truly, we couldn’t want for more. Taking a yearly family vacation is a luxury - a carefully-budgeted-for-in-advance, not-unappreciated treat. What we could use, however, is a little less. By “less” I am not referring to the extravagance of our trip - which is really quite modest by most standards - nor to the amount of ice cream my children have eaten. I think back to the way trips were planned when I was a child, which is very different from how things happen in 2026. Among my reminisces, it strikes me that what we need less of is certainty.

Due to a number of factors - mostly revolving around the advent of the Internet - we have an unprecedented amount of information and choice in any decision we make, which are two main bulwarks of certainty. Any arrangement we make can be selected with happy confidence in the most minute detail. A book can be ordered online after previewing almost the entire contents, learning the author’s life story, favorite color and political perspective. Very few experiences occur without pre-planned knowledge of the full event. Gone are the days when a vacation home would be booked solely based on a verbal recommendation from a friend, or a listing in a phone book. Restaurants are visited after pre-booking online, the menu pre-viewed, with all foods and ingredients listed for our scrutiny and reassurance.

We no longer have much mystery, anticipation, or enchantment in our everyday lives. What we do have is certainty - positive assurance. I remember the way my parents would book a vacation home in my early childhood, before VRBO and Airbnb. They heard of a place to stay that sounded nice, through a friend or by chance on a nearby visit, and made a call to gather more information and speak to the homeowner. If they decided it seemed like a fit for our family, they would take a chance and mail a check or wire money. The home would be advertised as a three bedroom, one bathroom, beach-adjacent house with a decent yard for children, or something of the sort. You couldn’t see high-definition pictures of every room down to the baseboards behind the toilet and the lighting in the kitchen. Sometimes we would arrive and the layout would not be as planned, or there would be fewer beds than promised, or other unexpected quirks which could not have been anticipated. The lack of certainty provided an opportunity for patience, adaptability, and appreciation of the potential disappointments and curiosities.

One would head into town for a coffee or sandwich and arrive to find the shop closed unforeseen, or moved, or under different ownership and purveying entirely different items than expected. This was an especially common experience if the vacation spot was visited annually. Different businesses would spring up from year to year, and one would have the delightful experience of exploring new stores and meeting new shopkeepers. On the other hand, some places of business remained constant, which allowed for the warm, satisfying experience of revisiting a well-loved place year after year. Now when we visit our little beach town, we can see every business’s name, hours, menu with prices and ingredients, and items for sale before we even arrive. We do not wonder if there are donuts available, or a special event in town, or limited beach hours because we know with certainty.

One would think that the availability of more information would create a better experience; and in some ways, it has. For example, we have a number of food sensitivities and medical issues in our family that prohibit certain menu items and activities. It is now easy to plan ahead for these circumstances and make sure we have adequate dietary choices in the area, whereas in decades past we would have taken much to chance. Instead of gluten free bread and dairy free ice cream, one would make do with salami and potatoes. And yet our self-satisfied enjoyment seems somehow lessened by the available knowledge of everything.

Certainty has not truly replaced enchantment. It never left, but can be temporarily obscured or forgotten. I encourage you to pause and reflect before unnecessarily gathering endless information about a topic, or place, or person.

Do you really need to know?

What would it be like to wonder, instead?

Perhaps a smaller world is a more enchanting world.

A life of mystery is still available to us, but we must actively choose it. Some of the ways you could regain a sense of mystery could be…

• Going for a drive without using a map, and seeing where you end up

• Trying a recipe without reading the reviews - better yet, making up your own recipe

• Booking a vacation without reading details about the home and location beyond the barest necessity - scary, I know!

• Taking a walk without a plan or your phone, remaining present so as to notice the minute details and tiny novelties around you

• Selecting a book to read with an unknown-to-you author from a small book shop

• People watching in a local park

• Playing with a small child, with your phone securely shut elsewhere so that you can pay attention to their sense of wonder (and hopefully reawaken your own)

• Reading and contemplating the old fairy tales

This little list of mystery-seeking activities may seem baldly simple, and that is because it is in fact so simple to reclaim a moment, a pastime of mystery in the every day moments of our lives. Mystery hasn’t truly disappeared, we’ve only forgotten how to find it. It has been waiting for our presence in the walk not taken, the plain moments of joy, the unnamed sights we may see and ponder.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I am humbled by your support and words of kindness! If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe below. Most of my writing is free because, well, I want lots of people to have the opportunity to read it. Paying subscribers have access to the entire archive, podcast episodes, essay voiceovers, and the private chat. They also help contribute towards our family’s livelihood and ongoing mission to build legacy and tradition in our home.

Blessings,

Emily