The Intelligence of Not Choosing Too Soon

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, American novelist, “The Crack-Up” (1936)

Fitzgerald published this line in Esquire while his life was coming apart in public and private. His career had stalled, his finances were in trouble, his health was deteriorating, and his wife, Zelda, was living with severe mental illness. “The Crack-Up” is not a sleek piece of advice from a man perched serenely above human confusion; it is an essay written from inside the wreckage, trying to understand how a person can be both damaged and still responsible for what he does next.

That context matters. Fitzgerald was not praising indecision, hypocrisy, or the sort of mushy “everyone has a point” thinking that turns dinner conversations into fog. He was describing the uncomfortable fact that two things can be true at once: you can love someone and resent them; a decision can be necessary and still be painful; a person can be both a victim of circumstances and an agent within them. The mature mind does not rush to kill one truth so the other can feel victorious.

Try using the sentence today as a small diagnostic. When you feel compelled to choose between two fiercely worded positions, ask whether the real task is to carry both facts long enough to see what they reveal. “This plan is promising” and “this plan could fail.” “I was wronged” and “I contributed to the mess.” “I need rest” and “someone is depending on me.” Holding the tension is not the conclusion. It is the part before the conclusion—the part most people skip because it is less comfortable than having an opinion.

Related: “Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” — John Keats, English poet, letter to his brothers (1817)

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” — Walt Whitman, American poet, Leaves of Grass (1855)