Tuesday, January 7, 2014

The Certainty of Uncertainty


Most of my life I've had an absolute knowing of what my next step was going to be. Last year, as we allllll knnnowwww (dead horse, I know), was quite the humbling edification in how that will not always be the case. So, after the lessons learned, I felt pret-ty high and mighty coming into 2014. I was ready for The Unknown of 2014. (The Unknown, meaning, I KNEW it was going to be awesome.)

Alas, as a bit of recovering perfectionist and unfortunately a lot o' a control freak, apparently there are still lessons I need to learn. Because yyyyet again, here I am sitting in uncertainty. In a situation that is totally out of my control and completely uncomfortable.

My automatic response to this uncertainty is to obsess endlessly until I figure it out. Convince myself that I'm a fortune teller and can therefore see the future. Or a time traveler, rereading the script of the past. We can make ourselves crazy, spinning our minds through the same handful of scenarios we come up with, over and over again, yet never feeling any closer to some sort of resolution.

Uncertainty makes us feel vulnerable and so we try and escape it any way we can. Unfortunately, neither mindlessly "staying busy" (read: my house is so spotless) nor mindfully trying to figure it out actually solves the problem.

And, honestly, ain't nobody got time for that. Plus, its freakin' exhausting. So, I’ve come to realize that all of my ideas of “knowing” actually block me from the truth more than they reveal it.

It seems a great paradox that it is actually through embracing the uncertainty that we thrive. That our lives are greatly determined by what we do when we were uncertain. I realized this last night... That in those quiet, or noisy, wayward moments, it was my intuition that navigated me to the path I needed to be on.

I have found that when I am in that anxious, fearful state, where I’m trying figure it all out on my own, that noise in my head that is trying to control everything will often drown out my intuition.

So I'm accepting that things are unknown, that I don’t have all of the answers. That I may be hurt. But this is not being done to me. Rather for me.

I have breathing room, room for exploration, joy, and reflection. And the certainly that teachings are always available if we are paying attention.

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