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    Season of the DeerISSUE 02 / 12

    The antidote to certainty.

    Profile picture of Author Carlo Mahfouz
    Carlo Mahfouz | Jan 19th 2025
    Check Your RealityDiscuss
    Uncertainty is the child of time.

    We don’t know what tomorrow holds — that is the absolute truth. Yet for some reason, we are tormented by it. Day in and day out, we find ourselves grasping at a future we desperately want to control but never can.

    • Who fools us every time?
    • What are we running to?
    • Who’s orchestrating this dance?

    — It’s meant to be. #recognize

    There is a time for everything or at least that’s what we hope. These past two weeks I have been looking for an answer. I have been waiting for something. I didn’t know what and it felt like an eternity.

    In that turmoil, I found myself in the pages of a book I had longed to read.

    Its first page was signed by my dear friend and its author Dino Carella, with this inscription to boot: “The wind has brought us together in Terni and who knows where it’s going to take us next. Wherever it’s going to be we are the wind and we will always be.”

    Auhto of the Way of the Wind, Dino Carella, signing his book to Carlo Mahfouz.

    Those words made me feel at home. I knew I was in the right place.

    Dino’s storytelling is so visceral and effortlessly flowing that it robs you of your will to stop. Instead, it carries you through each word like riding a joy ride you don’t want to end.

    And I sure didn’t want this ride to end. Yet not thirty pages in, two words froze me in my tracks: “Diseases of consciousness.”

    They perfectly captured what had been plaguing me these past two weeks — a peculiar affliction of the mind.

    I had been suffering from my own disease of consciousness, one that had me living under its mercy in the illusion of what we call “Time.”

    — Evidence-Based. #understand

    Time, the construct built out of a mind trying to justify its track record, is the safe harbor that grants us a sense of control. But imagine for a second it doesn’t exist —what would happen then?

    The very thought terrifies us. So armed with data, patterns, and predictions, we wage war against the unknown. We build fortresses of carefully plotted maps and five-year plans, thinking we can outsmart uncertainty. But what if these very defenses are our prison?

    We dissect moments into measurable units, turn memories into prophecies, and slice existence into past and future, leaving the present to bleed out between them.

    Every certainty crumbles under its own weight. Every prediction becomes another scar on the face of now. Yesterday’s pain becomes tomorrow’s armor. Today’s joy becomes tomorrow’s expectation.

    We’ve turned time into our accomplice, using it to maintain the illusion of control.

    Our obsession continues overlooking the most obvious culprit of all.

    — The little fucker. #accept

    Your mind or “that little f*cker” if I may would like you to think that the antidote to uncertainty is knowing and being certain.

    Yet that’s a ruse. You cannot break the illusion by playing its game. You cannot break the cycle without seeing beyond its limitations. It’s impossible.

    And that’s precisely how.

    To break the cycle, to overcome the illusion of time holding you hostage with uncertainty: Have faith in the impossible.

    You will witness the glimmer and comfort in the eyes of an eternal present vulnerable, doubtful yet deeply joyful without a reason, a purpose, or a past/future lurking over your shoulders. That is what I found and in it, I rest my case.

    Until next time,
    Carlo

    Check Your RealityDiscuss
    Previous
    Meet the best liars of 2025.
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    The death trap of labels.
    Season of the Deer
    01
    Meet the best liars of 2025.
    02
    The antidote to certainty.
    03
    The death trap of labels.
    04
    Enough with trust...
    05
    Less is more…

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