Sure before anything changes

A man has run a textile shop in old Sharjah for most of his life. His daughter wants to start selling the fabrics online, with photographs and delivery across the country.

He says he would be happy to try, as soon as someone can show him for certain that it will work.

Nobody can. Nobody ever will be able to, until it has been tried. And so the shop stays exactly as it is, while the street around it gets a little quieter each year.

Asking for certainty sounds careful. In practice, it is a vote for the way things are, because the only way to be sure about the future is to wait until it has already arrived.

There is a more useful conversation available. Not will it work, but how likely is it to work, and what would it cost to find out.

His customers already send him photographs of fabric they want matched. Younger buyers in the family ask why they cannot order from home. A few shops nearby have tried it and kept going. Against that sits the cost of a camera, some packaging and a few months of the daughter's evenings.

And on the other side of the table sits a quieter bet, the one he is already making: that the shop will be fine if nothing changes. Looked at honestly, those odds are not good.

Put that way, the argument stops being the cautious father against the impatient daughter. They are looking at the same odds from the same side, and can adjust them together as they learn.

Certainty sounds like a high standard. Most of the time it is a polite way of saying not yet, again.