The Hope in Uncertainty
What are you uncertain about right now?
What question do you feel you have to answer immediately?
Sometimes detachment is not as easy as we’d like. The mind loves a good drama. It’s like we all have our own team of screenwriters every day at our disposal. Past drama, current drama, future drama. The stories they love to concoct, and dream up. Maybe because without a story to follow, it’s easy to feel lost. Easy to feel like we’re floating. Without story there might be no purpose. What would be the meaning of life?
What if rather than torturing ourselves thinking about the meaning OF life, we simply allowed ourselves to feel the meaning IN life?
The meaning in another’s eyes, when words don’t have meaning anymore. The meaning in a colour that made you stop when you saw it, the nameless emotion it made you feel. The meaning of the softest touch, that caused you to finally exhale and drop your shoulders.
Uncertainty feels big and scary when it’s focused on questions we can’t answer. And yet, it can feel small and hopeful when it’s focused on what’s directly in front of us.
When we choose to only look at this moment now, what once felt like fear may begin to feel like hope. We transform what used to scare us when we elect to face it. And in doing so, the tables are turned. We end up having power over what used to have power over us.
The fear of a memory, whether it’s seeing it or losing it, is the same fear. Both require our energy to suppress what naturally wants to happen. Must happen. We cannot stop the inevitable. Change waits for no one. Even as we try so hard to hold on to the present, in the next breath it’s already become the past.
The fear of what’s to come, whether it’s becoming what we want or what we don’t want, is the same fear. Both require us to attach to something that’s beyond our control. An outcome we think is better vs. one we think is worse. But neither is certain. Even if an outcome is what we desired, what it leads to may be something undesirable. And even if an outcome seems devastating at the time, what it leads to may be the ultimate version of ourselves that we were meant to be. A version that helps others. A version that is strong, inspired, undefeatable. All of this requires growth. And growth demands discomfort, even pain, even agony, at times.
None of which you’ve never faced. None of which you haven’t survived.
None of us were born with the ability to predict the future. And perhaps there is a reason for that. Perhaps the design of the human brain is so perfect that it accounts for our ability to hope, to dream, to create. And in this design, the element of uncertainty is not only necessary, it’s vital to our desire to continue to experiment, discover and achieve things we never thought possible. During these moments of awe, we are reminded of all that’s still left to wonder. All that’s still out of reach. And because it is out of reach, it creates the stimulus for us to keep going.
And that’s all that hope is. That as we keep going, we find out a little bit more about what we’re made of. What we can do. What we can be. What we are here for. The meaning in all the things we do, at our fingertips, beckoning to be felt.
