You Can’t Withdraw from Life While Deciding How to Live

“In my own search for Truth, a major step came during the years 1952-1953. This step consisted in a release from the belief that Truth had to be ‘certain;’ rational, logical, self-sustaining, self-evident, publicly demonstrable. I suddenly came to see that whenever I made such demands I inevitably discovered only myself: I was walled in by myself, limited to myself, for I was the one who was being logical, being rational, standing as judge over the Truth. It is a small world on those terms.

Along with that realization came its companion: that it is impossible for me to withdraw from the process of living while I make up my mind how to live. While I try to decide whether this is the proper train for me to take, the doors close, the train moves on, and I am left on a vacant platform. Drop a man in the pounding surf: he does not have time to conduct an elaborate survey of winds, tides, wave-motions; he has to swim as best he can. And we are in the surf, spiritually speaking. It became clear to me that unimpassioned detachment on matters of death or life, what some philosophers call the existential issues of life, is nonsense and immoral.”

— Thomas S. Brown, 1954 (source)
American Quaker lecturer and teacher