Over the past few weeks, I have written a fair amount about how stressed and anxious I have been feeling. When I take time to reflect on this, one of the things that stands out to me most is that a large portion of my distress arose largely from the uncertainty of the situation. One way of describing the pressure I have been feeling is not what might happen, but instead the problem was not knowing what was going to happen. The irony is, I was fairly aware of this at the time, but still felt the tension. So, what can I learn from this?
As humans, we crave certainty. We latch onto what we think is solid, predictable, and absolute. Our brains are constantly trying to make predictions about the future, and our nervous system feels lousy when we do not have confidence in those predictions. We seek out information, try to reassure ourselves by talking to others, or try to do something (anything!) to decrease the anxiety of not knowing– and thereby, we hope, feel better.
When patients come in to see me with a potentially serious problem (perhaps a worry about cancer), I often warn them that the waiting period is even worse than a bad diagnosis. The process and stress of undergoing testing, of not knowing what is wrong is frequently harder than getting a bad prognosis. It is a remarkable statement, that the worry about something bad happening may actually be worse than the bad thing itself happening.
This lens helps me make sense of why so many people feel like our country, democracy, and the world is in such a difficult place to be right now– it has less to do with with any specific change, and much more to do with the fact that we are living through times where the future feels much less fixed. If we knew how things we turn out, we could plan and organize and take action, and that would feel ok. The fact that we do not know is a huge driver of our distress.
The challenge, of course, is that the future is always uncertain– always has been, always will be. it is our perception and feeling of that uncertainty that changes. Much of what is written about how to navigate uncertainty is cast in terms of our response to it. For example, we might think about managing uncertainty by focusing on what we have control over, or on trying to actually name the possible outcomes– the latter as a means of decreasing our uncertainty, or helping to realize that even bad outcomes are manageable. Or, we might think about ways of increasing our tolerance of uncertainty, for becoming progressively more comfortable with the fact that things are unpredictable.
But there is a different approach that moves away from the idea that uncertainty is a problem to be managed, and instead moves toward the idea that uncertainty is a truth to be realized. After all, uncertainty is a fundamental part of reality, of the structure of existence. Although our brains crave permanence, there is almost nothing permanent in life. A fair amount of the suffering we endure revolves around this central tension– our desire for something to hold onto in an impermanent world.
Most of the time, we move through life buffered by routines, assumptions, and expectations that create the feeling of stability. We assume tomorrow will look mostly like today. We assume our health, relationships, careers, and identities are more fixed than they really are. The anxiety around uncertainty comes from a false premise: that there should be certainty, and that a stable self requires it.
Viewed from this perspective, moments of uncertainty are not interruptions of reality, but glimpses of reality as it actually is. They pull us out of the illusion that life was ever fully stable or predictable in the first place. In that sense, uncertainty is not merely something to tolerate, but something that can deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world.
Recognizing this is one thing. Actually living this way is another. But if embracing uncertainty is a skill, there are things we can do to get better at it.
We can train ourselves to practice sitting with uncertainty. The more we notice in our day-to-day life how much we do not know about what comes next, the more familiar that state becomes. Just sitting in the backyard, we do not know when the birds will chirp, when the wind will blow, how the clouds will change. When we pay attention to that impermanence and that uncertainty, and notice that we are ok with it, we build the muscle of not-knowing, of accepting whatever unfolds next.
In the same vein, when we are open to whatever comes next, we attach much less to any outcome. This allows us to open ourselves much more to the many possibilities that lie ahead of us. The tightness and anxiousness we feel comes from holding on to one particular outcome strongly. The more we let go of that, the more free we feel to embrace any possible outcome.
The more we deliberately remind ourselves of the transience of all things — not morbidly, but clearly — the more we see the silliness of trying to hold onto it. Our brain craves solidity, but nothing is really that solid. The more we experience this (not just intellectually grasp it), the more our brain lets go of that idea. Just like we can train our nervous system to ride a bike, we can train our nervous system to understand that there is really nothing permanent to hold onto in the first place. This is an invitation to stay with the raw experience of life, rather than the stories and projections the mind builds around it — including catastrophic (or blissful) stories about uncertain futures.
The future was never secure. We simply built stories that allowed us to forget that fact for a while. Peace may come not from eliminating uncertainty, but from becoming less afraid of living inside it.
Love,
Doc
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