A couple of times every year, I visit Copenhagen to deliver guest lectures to aspiring writers. Even though I don’t belong to any one location due to a life spent traversing the globe, I cherish my familiarity with the various cities I can traverse without requiring a map or conscious thought. To my delight, Copenhagen has recently become part of this select group, alongside Dublin, London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Reykjavik, Kyoto, and a few others. My years of exploration have equipped me with an internal compass that guides me instinctively through these cities.
On one such occasion, I was asked to discuss a memoir I penned 15 years ago. The memoir narrates the year my family and I resided in Iceland. Choosing to move in 2009 was less than ideal due to the national economic crash and the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, yet it was a thoroughly enlightening period. We grappled with the peculiarities of being immigrants in a smaller island state that harbours a potent sense of national pride, which would later prove useful when navigating another case of immigration. The book hadn’t crossed my mind in several years, to the point that I had to purchase an e-book version to refresh my memory for the lecture.
Revisiting the memoir’s initial chapters evoked feelings of sympathy and scorn for the protagonist — my 34-year-old self. The cocksureness of this woman was overwhelming. She held steadfast opinions about a range of subjects including politics, economics, parenting, and cooking, and she considered them infallible. She had unyielding beliefs about which facets of her family’s former life were crucial to maintain and which ones she could afford to modify, only realising several months later that life is not always a matter of choice. Changes occur spontaneously and human control is often far more restricted than we imagine it to be.
Whilst waiting at the airport, I sent a message to old friends, questioning my past antics and how they managed to tolerate me. One respectably mentioned my adventurous nature. They admired how I dared to relocate to Iceland with two small kids, an act of courage they wished they possessed. Another confessed their envy towards my self-confidence, while I always perceived them as far more self-assured than I ever was, and rightly so.
Sometimes I doubt even the concept of doubt itself, as there are definitive moments and situations where the need to possess and exercise conviction is unavoidable. These are the moments where it’s crucial to take a stand, to make ourselves be seen and heard, to physically participate. As I gazed out the plane window over Scotland, a disconcerting thought crossed my mind. Should destiny permit, upon reaching my 63rd year will I be dismayed by the memoir I’m planning to publish presently, in the same way the one about Iceland distresses me now?
In the past 15 years, my key learning has been more about what I do not know, how essential doubt is and how unreliable my own perspectives or immediate thoughts can be. It has taken me a long time to appreciate this level of scepticism, particularly in a teaching environment. Here, it is seen as a sign of assurance and aptitude to openly admit to not having all the answers and to enthusiastically encourage students to embrace curiosity and unknown outcomes.
In the act of creating art over conflict, curiosity surpasses conviction. As the great Keats praised Shakespeare’s ability to “remain in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. This aptitude is the source of creativity and an appropriate goal for a novelist, someone who should be able to perceive from varying viewpoints and articulate in myriad voices.
However, it unsettles me that each person seems to be expected to formulate standpoints on foreign, immigration, agricultural, and environmental matters, as if we each represent a separate nation ready to deploy military forces or approve a nuclear power plant. Of course, I have my own beliefs, most of which are typical of a cycling, vegetarian, feminist academic. But my certainty about them is minimal, and I can appreciate why others might contest almost every one of my beliefs.
It’s becoming increasingly challenging for me to unambiguously align myself with one perspective in most, but not every, discussion taking place nowadays. This is a shift from my early days, when I would passionately protest, an inclination I’ve held since infancy, thanks to my mother who would take me along to ‘Take Back the Night’ demonstrations in my pram during the 1980s. However, my certainty has been waning, there is a time and place for assuredness, and specific instances necessitate making a stand and declaring one’s stance. If this progression continues, I fear I may be at a complete loss for solid opinions in the next decade and a half.
Sarah Moss is an accomplished author who relocated to Ireland in 2020 where she now imparts her knowledge in Creative Writing at University College Dublin (UCD).