Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our Sunday series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, the great marathon swimmer Diana Nyad wrote about wrestling with the hands of time. This week, Joel Klein, 78, recalls two clerkships with two prominent judges 50 years ago, and what he learned about certainty, doubt, and the value of humility.
According to Voltaire, “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”
For much of my adult life I’ve been amazed at how often I’ve thought to myself, “I wish I was as certain about one thing as that person is about everything.” If anything, as our world becomes more polarized, certainty is on the rise. Being certain is something I know a bit about. Back in the late 1960s and early ’70s, I was an anti-war, cocksure liberal convinced I knew it all—politics, policy, who were the good guys, and who were the bad guys. I was so smug that I stupidly refused to vote for Hubert Humphrey in 1968—too close to Lyndon Johnson for my taste.
Then, a couple of years after graduating from law school in 1971, I landed two judicial clerkships, first with a distinguished liberal judge on the United States Court of Appeals in D.C., and then with a conservative on the Supreme Court. Looking at their political labels, I was certain the first clerkship was going to be spectacular—I would be helping someone in power make the world a better place. The second, by contrast, looked to be difficult—I would learn a lot but would be helping a man whose views I opposed. As it turned out, I was wrong about both. Together, they taught me a vital lesson: Being certain is no guarantee of being right.
