a letter to uncertainty
Dear Friend,
You may feel uncertain at this time. But I’m here to tell you that there is one thing that you can be certain of.
You can be certain that you are uncertain. And that is okay.
That is something to hold onto.
Uncertainty isn’t an easy feeling to bear. It doesn’t settle well within us, like a poor taste in the mouth, a ringing in the ears, a buzzing in the brain, an itch you can’t scratch. It isn’t a big feeling. It’s a million small feelings at once, a slow eruption of chaos that slowly builds until it feels all-consuming, freezing us in time and place, in mind and heart and even soul. To be uncertain is to be frozen and we humans are not meant to be stagnant. And the longer we remain stagnant, the more doubt is allowed to breed.
You must change the language that you use with yourself, in this phase of your life. Shift this time of aimless uncertainty into a time of intentional uncertainty and you will break up the ice that has frozen you within, that keeps you in this place.
Make room for the possibility that you are not meant to know what you are doing, that you are not meant to what your purpose is until you reach it. That one day you will reach a place in your life, after all this uncertainty, and look around and realize you’ve arrived at the place you were meant to be. And you reached it because you kept moving forward despite not having direction.
There will come a time when you look back to this time of uncertainty and see that there was nothing to fear. That this uncertainty only felt shameful because we live in a world that requires answers all the time to everything. But that is not how life works. That is the one thing you can be certain of, that life itself is uncertain. So why do you demand something of yourself that isn’t true to you in this phase of your becoming?
Forgive yourself for not having all the answers to the immense complexity of life and to the universe of human possibility within you. We are not meant to have all the answers. For it would not be living if we took every step with assured direction.
Confidence is not formed by taking each step in life knowing exactly where you are walking, knowing precisely where you need to step. It comes from taking that step even though you don’t know where it will take you because you trust your ability to live through the next phase of life, the next choice, the next moment.
And that is where your uncertainty lies. Not because you don’t know where your life is headed but because you don’t trust yourself to exist in the circumstances of an infinite list of possible futures. You are uncertain of your ability to survive that which you can’t foresee and it is only human of you to be cautious.
But do you want to avoid your life, dear friend? Or do you want to live it?
Is it possible for you to celebrate your uncertainty, to reframe it as being chosen instead of being succumbed to? To decide that you have chosen your uncertainty, not that it has chosen you. To decide that you have not figured out your purpose because you are not trying to control who you will be in the future. That you are trusting you will get the answers you seek when it is time, when you are ready to hear them, and, most importantly, when you are the person you had to become in order to understand them.
Remember, even though all the facets of our lives in this universe remain uncertain and uncontrollable and wild and chaotic, you can always choose yourself. You can always remain certain of that single assured fact of life. That you trust yourself to survive whatever life may bring you. You have survived everything so far to be exactly where you are now. Why do you doubt your ability to survive what comes next?
So let your questions sit. Let them remain unanswered. Let them stew in the spaces of your chosen uncertainty. Take that next step.
Trust yourself to live your life.