I read this piece in The Plain Dealer (reprinted from Bloomberg) and loved it. Had to share it. Thank you clever Stephen Carter, a  columnist and professor of law at Yale University who penned the piece. I couldn’t agree more. I wish my students and young professionals would learn to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty and mystery. It’s not always black and white. Up or down. There is not always a single right answer. There is not always an answer at all. The answer that seems most right today may not be tomorrow. Relax, find joy in wonderment. In possibilities. In the what-ifs…. Bravo, Professor Carter!

“We always got the easy parts, we clever teenagers. We knew that the Jester was Bob Dylan, and that “Jack Flash sat on a candlestick” referred to the Rolling Stones playing Candlestick Park. “Eight miles high and falling fast” was trivial. There were always a few kids who attached a deep theological meaning to “no angel born in hell” — surely not the Hell’s Angels and the murder at Altamont in December 1969, that was too easy! — but the rest of us were smugly certain. The best way to start an argument, though, was to present some confident thesis on what was meant by “for 10 years we’ve been on our own” or who was singing “dirges in the dark.”
That was what it was like to be in high school in small-town America in 1971 when Don McLean’s iconic “American Pie” was released. At eight and a half minutes long, the song was by far the longest No . 1 single in history. The mysteries of its lyrics were a part of our lives, even those of us who didn’t particularly care for popular music.

We always got the easy parts, we clever teenagers. We knew that the Jester was Bob Dylan, and that “Jack Flash sat on a candlestick” referred to the Rolling Stones playing Candlestick Park. “Eight miles high and falling fast” was trivial. There were always a few kids who attached a deep theological meaning to “no angel born in hell” — surely not the Hell’s Angels and the murder at Altamont in December 1969, that was too easy! — but the rest of us were smugly certain. The best way to start an argument, though, was to present some confident thesis on what was meant by “for 10 years we’ve been on our own” or who was singing “dirges in the dark.”
That was what it was like to be in high school in small-town America in 1971 when Don McLean’s iconic “American Pie” was released. At eight and a half minutes long, the song was by far the longest No . 1 single in history. The mysteries of its lyrics were a part of our lives, even those of us who didn’t particularly care for popular music.”

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-02-14/-american-pie-and-sweet-unknowns