Negative capability is the description Keats gave to the ability to contain within the mind multiple contradictory or mutually exclusive ideas, and outright mysteries, without feeling the need to reconcile what is clearly irreconcilable. He phrased this latter thought beautifully: “...capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries (sic), doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

This is a licence for interrogation without conclusion, and it admonishes us to multiply questions and contradictions knowing that they may never be resolved. This concept should be received, in my opinion, as a tremendous relief by us all. Some things actually are undetermined, and that means something, and possesses value.