Embracing uncertainty

In the last couple years, almost every person I know has been faced with an increasing amount of uncertainty in their life. This uncertainty seems to directly provoke a sense of being unhappy, or unfulfilled. Its likely to be everyone, but honestly I havent asked everyone. Some friends say that it feels less stable to live their lives, some say it feels more complicated as time goes by. I say these are all forms of uncertainty.

How do you cope with uncertainty?
How do you tolerate the anxiety of the unknown?

The band Death Cab for Cutie put it very well in the song "What Sarah Said", with the lyrics 'Every plan is a tiny prayer to father time'. We invest deeply in the idea of security. As a culture, we are taught that planning and investing in security will bring a pay off... a reward...

Planning and working towards something guarantees future safety from danger or threat.

This is how we think. This is what we teach ourselves, but is it true?

I observe an increased feeling of uncertainty within myself and my friends while we are all acting as cogs in the machine of cultural planning. We have learned to want a guarantee, and in turn it seems we have produced (manufactured) an increased sense of insecurity... an increased sense of uncertainty. After all, as a consumer, we can pay for a guarantee on any product... why arent we able to pay for a guarantee on our own sense of satisfaction. Thats what consuming is all about... right?

Its not that life now is less certain than life at any other time. Sure, some variables may have changed in the long run to make life slightly more strange or dangerous. Overall though, life is a heck of a lot more certain than it was even fifty years ago. Look at public health statistics and compare todays numbers here in the western world with just about any stats from any time period. Things are, in general, looking up.

So how come it feels worse, and how do we deal with it?

One possibility is this: feeling uncertain serves a purpose for each of us. I dont mean to sound cliche when I say that we should each figure out what that is for ourselves. But we should. It may be that feeling uncertain about your life indicates that you are out of touch with who you are. It may be a symptom of a lack of meaningful experiences in your life. It may simply be a signal that you feel overwhelmed by options. In any case, feeling uncertain has a lot to teach us. In a similar way to feeling dissatisfied, feeling uncertain indicates a lack of fulfillment... as if praying to father time could really satisfy anyone. It can only prep us to feel satisfaction when the time comes that things go according to our expectations.

Some people interpret feeling uncertain in other ways. I think a lot of people fear it. Admittedly, uncertainty is not the nicest feeling but many react to it. Some people try to reason it away. And while rationality will solve many problems, it rarely is able to express what we feel in our hearts.

Uncertainty about your life, is felt in your heart.

Some people try to force it away by doing things that dont work, but doing them harder. This lacks creativity, something that I think is essential to coping with uncertainty. Learning to tolerate who you are and, to a certain degree, be vulnerable with this is also essential to dealing with uncertainty. This enables you to be true to yourself, not that any of us are really good at this... but that we abstain from judgement about it and keep working towards synthesizing our own happiness rather than blaming ourselves for not stumbling across a romantic kind of good fortune. Synthetic happiness is every bit as genuine as 'natural' happiness, it may even be more authentic because it truly comes from within. Interestingly to me, I think many religious experiences fall into the category of synthetic happiness. In a good way, we have learned to create happiness. Yet ironically, many of us dont realize how to do this... even though they have been doing it for a long time.

The idea of happiness is romanitc, and its also related to uncertainty. The experience of happiness may be entirely different than the idea of it. I think its possible for a person to be simultaneously uncertain AND happy, though this requires growth. Many people have not reached this point because growth is not always comfortable and many times in order to grow, we must trade a sense of the familiar with temporary anxiety and step into the unknown. And I dont know anyone who does this on Friday nights...

Tolerating our own anxiety in order to grow seems to be a direct path to finding or manufacturing happiness in the face of uncertainty. Along the way, we get a clearer sense of self, we learn to be true to it, and we are forced to be creative in order to maintain appreciation for the long, strange trip.