But what we forget is that while it’s easy for us to parse, others may not feel the same way. While we have spent lots of time thinking about something, or know a lot about it, we often fail to account for the fact that others may not be in the same position.

Highlighting the hurdles—moving from lows to highs and back again—and mixing up moments—leveraging emotional volatility—can help turn any story into a great one.

It turns out that these differences in certainty have an important impact on sustained attention. Looking across thousands of pieces of content, we found that uncertain emotions encouraged engagement…

Uncertainty led readers to stick around to resolve what they didn’t know.

This sort of gap between what a person says and what he makes you feel is not uncommon – think of the friend who rings you when you’re down, talks to you in an encouraging, supportive way, but leaves you feeling worse. The space between Matt’s words and the feelings he provoked in me was enormous. He was describing a life that was frightening, but I didn’t feel frightened for him. I felt uncharacteristically disengaged.

A lot of the suffering we will witness in life will be greater than ours. There’s the question of what we can do to help and the different question of what to do when we can’t help. Often one thinks of another’s suffering: my dear friend you have so much life due you, how can this be happening? (I’m at Mass General waiting to see Emily.) For the sake of loyalty we keep in our minds the imagination of their private anguish. We cycle through all the emotions with them but often we also think—or behave as if we think—the abyss is remote for us.