The Wonder of Uncertainty

I can’t stop thinking about uncertainty. My uncertainty. My friends’ uncertainties. The world’s uncertainty. At the risk of sounding like a privileged asshole, I’ll go ahead and say it aloud: this is the first time in my life I’ve actually let uncertainty sink down into the depths of my stomach-lining and acknowledge its existence.

The more it’s made itself a home in me, the more my stomach has churned in the wee hours of the morning, reminding me that my uncertain reality is still my reality — even while I’m supposed to be sleeping.

Some of my quarantined days have been spent enjoying my untethered chaos of a life. The general lack of structure and absence of a job has allowed me to spend my days on the patio of a houseboat I’m renting, working on a business I hope to launch, doodling, reading, or writing. And other days I get stuck wishing I knew exactly where I’ll be living next month.

You see, six months ago, I put my life in storage to start said business and travel around the world. The health pandemic forced me back “home,” but without a real home to hole up in while I wait out this quarantine. While my daily schedule really isn’t much different than life on the road, adding another unknown variable to the equation I use to mentally forecast my life has proven a bit challenging. We all crave a nice warm blanket when it feels cold, after all.

The other morning, the knot in my stomach woke me up during those wee hours. It was when my heart started beating a little too fast that I was suddenly reminded of my aliveness. Not in that I was thankful for merely being alive, but for feeling alive.

I know what it’s like to feel dead in an alive body all too well. For most of my adult life, I knew what every Monday would look like. Tuesday, too. Oh, and every other day of the week. The foundation for my life had etched its way up the walls, making me feel trapped in a house of too much certainty. I felt too young to not wonder about any more big unknowns. At the time, however, I didn’t realize uncertainty was what I was craving. In a lot of ways, I think it’s what a lot of people unknowingly crave.

In my experience, I’ve learned one important thing about human emotions. You can only go as high as you can go low. Flat-lining is okay for a short while — but too much, and bit by bit, different parts of you start to fall asleep until your spirit does, too. Our culture subjects people to this form of rotting. Convincing us it is our job to turn all of our uncertainties into certainty before our lives can actually begin. So, we work really hard to make everything certain and steady…and then wonder why something doesn’t feel quite right when it’s finally all in order. In practice, removing the effervescent wonder uncertainty provides doesn’t mean our lives can begin; it means they’ve ended.

As I layed there in the dark, contemplating the shadows of my uncertainty, a laugh suddenly escaped my lips. I desperately tried to smother my strange feeling in hopes of falling back asleep. At first, it hardly felt like the sound was my own. In fact, I didn’t really even know why I was laughing.

As I mulled it over, I realized I was both pretty overtired and suddenly struck with a revelation: uncertainty is one of the most important and profound parts of being a human. Because, despite the pits it creates in our stomachs and uncomfortable pounding it ignites in our chests, truly, I think it’s one of the only things that keeps our souls alive.

While doses of certainty are required to calm the storms that sometimes start to feel all-consuming, too much is synonymous with death. If everything were certain, there would be no more wondering, or hoping, or dreaming. More importantly, there would be no yearning for the possibility of anything, because our lives would already be defined. We would simply be waiting to color in the spaces with the crayons handed to us at predetermined intervals.

It’s in the absence of knowing precisely what is going to happen in one minute, one month, or one year from now that our imagination lives. It’s the vastness of this part of ourselves that fuels the beauty of the world with an endlessness to possibility. And sometimes, it’s believing in the possibility of something that doesn’t feel like it could exist during our time on earth that keeps certain breeds of us going. I, for one, would rather believe in untamed unknowns than the certainty of stale bread.

Refocusing the relentless energy behind my uncertainty to the awe of my aliveness changed everything for me. The fear behind my uncertainty turned into a form of excitement. I felt truly excited to see what would become of my wild unknowns. Rather than succumb to the practicality I intentionally chose to leave back in October because of my scaredness, I started to feel excited about the wonder of what might come my way.

Truly, if I’ve learned anything at all about the ebb and flow of life, everything tends to work out in a way that seems obvious in hindsight. While it might involve hardship and those god-awful pits in our stomachs and tears and other uncomfortable things, it works out. And if you like the beauty of lightning, you shouldn’t be afraid of some storms. They make you stronger and add electricity to your existence you just can’t experience in an enclosed, cozy house of certainty.

Dwelling in uncertainty is like basking in a daydream. It could be a good one. Or a bad one. But it allows us the freedom to at least believe something could surpass our wildest expectations. Next time I awake with a pounding chest when I should still be sleeping, I hope I again laugh at the strange goodness of feeling alive.