Dila Cakir

There is one thing that guarantees a happy life more than anything else: warm, deep, enduring relationships. That is, according to the longest-ever study on happiness, conducted over a span of 88 years by Harvard University. Turns out, loneliness is as unhealthy as smoking 15 packs of cigarettes a day.

So, how do we cultivate high-quality relationships that last? The answer lies in uncertainty. By uncertainty, I mean two things. The first is the uncertainty of acknowledging that the personalities of other people, even those you know best, are not fixed or constant.

For example, on my first day of high school, a fellow freshman and I were sitting on the grass, eating Italian ice and chatting, when a sprinkler suddenly switched on and soaked us both. That experience, however seemingly random and insignificant, bonded us. He became my best friend throughout freshman and sophomore year, and I expected that initial energy to carry on throughout high school.

But as friend groups shifted around, he started hanging out with different people. It wasn’t only that, though. I felt that he was becoming someone totally different than I remembered from that first day of school, and for a while, though I refused to admit it to myself, I was angry at him for it. Couldn’t he see these changes? Did he have no desire to revert course? Senior year was when I finally realized that this grudge was ill-founded. The person he had become was just as natural, just as him, as the person I befriended freshman year. I realized that I had only known a fraction of who he was in his entirety, yet I had naively expected him to stay the same.

When my uncle taught me about the inconsistency principle that same year, my experiences made perfect sense. The principle, beautiful in its simplicity, has allowed me to become more open-minded and aware of hidden complexities within the people I meet.

The inconsistency principle is this: we humans often make promises about the future, and just as often break them. We expect other people’s future selves to be consistent with their current self, or their current self to be consistent with their past self, when this is so often not the case. Yes, some people are more rigid and stubborn than others, but overall, humans are fluid and dynamic; we change in little ways everyday, and in big ways over time. Consider the many examples of formerly incarcerated individuals who have become upstanding citizens upon reentry into society. To assume that the people around you are going to stay the same way forever is to deny human nature. Humans are fundamentally inconsistent beings, and the sooner we internalize this principle, the more honestly and compassionately we can act in our relationships.

The second interconnected type of uncertainty that fuels good relationships is having the humility to admit, first to yourself and then to others, when you don’t know something or when you have more to learn. Unfortunately, there is little room for this type of humility in our modern technology-driven worlds. Social media rewards confidence and extremism while rejecting uncertainty as weakness, as something worthless. As our feeds vainly project our own preferences and desires back to us 24/7, our brains learn to filter out doubt, nuance and the unknown. This in turn causes us to think and act more stubbornly, dogmatically and certainly, not just in our online worlds, but in-person. A 2025 study even showed that social media use is strongly associated with irritability and being prone to anger. And we wonder why there’s a loneliness epidemic going around.

So how can we heal, restore and maintain the close relationships in our lives? The most effective—and often the most difficult—way to improve our relationships is to engage in the parallel acts of listening and asking questions, both of which are fundamentally rooted in uncertainty. Even if you know someone extremely well, they may still surprise you. Genuinely listening to them without predicting their responses or simply waiting to speak allows you to be open and receptive to those surprises. Asking questions tells the person, “I’m not assuming I know everything about you. I’m not assuming who you are solely from impressions or external characteristics. I recognize that you are an inherently complex person, just like me, just like every other human, and I want to understand you on a deeper level.”

Whether it’s between strangers who just met, teachers and students in a classroom, friends or romantic partners who have known each other for years or family members who have known each other their entire lives, the healthiest relationships are the ones where both people understand that getting to know each other is a perpetually unfinished and evolving task. No matter how well you think you know someone, there is always another question to ask.

Elan Cohen is a member of the Class of 2028.