Negative capability

Today I was reading a story in the newspaper about a group of women dealing with cancer who meet together for support.  One of the women said of the group, "We strive for the condition of consciousness that the Romantic poet John Keats called 'negative capability,' the psychological state of residing in 'benign uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.'"  I had never heard of the term "negative capability" before, but was intrigued by the notion.  So much of life is uncertain, mysterious, and filled with doubt, yet, we often try to bring some reason and sense to what is happening.  Maybe that is the wrong approach, maybe we need to accept the uncertainty.  If we stop this "irritable reaching" maybe we will be happier. This seems very Buddhist to me. 

Feeling like I didn't have a good handle on all the things "Romanticism" meant, I did a little research (I looked on Wikipedia).  Romanticism was, in part, a reaction to scientific rationalization and included a greater appreciation of the natural world and emotions.  The people of the early 1800s were reacting to the Industrial Revolution and all the social changes associated with that dramatic shift in life. In sociology, we talk about this same period as the time in which scientific ideas were being applied to social problems, creating the field of sociology. Sociologists were moving in the opposite direction of the romantics, I suppose.

I'm thinking a little more of a Romantic perspective might be good in life.