Life's Hypotheses

  I think that sometimes, when life seems uncertain, a person needs to think scientifically. I am not thinking of 'science' in terms of trying to establish hard facts based on numerical data, but more about the process of forming a hypothesis and testing out the hypothesis to see if experience holds up against it. I certainly begin to think of dissertations in this way.
   I have found that when I panic or worry about not having a problem solved, I will tend to shift away from the problem itself and toward a perceived inadequacy in myself, which then leads to a depressed attitude. But if, instead, I think of the present situation as full of questions that can be investigated, I am no longer thinking that it's life or death to solve it. What I do is simply observe the situation to see what exactly happens and then act accordingly. There isn't a right or wrong/win or lose situation, only the processing of testing things out to see how exactly they work.
   Another analogy I can think of to describe this process of 'testing life's hypotheses' is to think of repairing a broken or malfunctioning device such as a flashlight. If I am so focused on what I think the flashlight is supposed to be doing, I will feel a certain despair every time my attempts to fix it fail. But if on the other hand I think of every hypothesis as bringing me closer to an understanding of the flashlight itself (how it might work and what conditions make it work) then there isn't any failure when it does not work. I think it's the same with situations where one doesn't have much progress in a desired end. If I worry too much that I don't have a dissertation topic to work toward, I will neglect the fact that what I am doing in the meantime is at least giving me knowledge and experience about the process itself: how questions are formed and created, what causes creativity to become stuck, what motivates me to stay resilient, and so on. So these are actually positive gains in learning experiences.