Uncertainty

The unknown is uncomfortable, but exploring the unknown is fundamental to the human experience.

We invent lenses that allow us to perceive incredibly small things, and develop other lenses that allow us to look out at the macro vastness of the universe. We want to see what’s over the next horizon, while simultaneously attempting to figure out what’s happening inside our own bodies and minds.

This is arguably one of our more beneficial traits, as it’s what incentivizes us to keep growing in experience and understanding, individually and as a species.

But because this also means we’re driven toward a source of discomfort, this predilection can result in a great deal of stress, fear, and apprehension.

Regardless, we seem to be unable to leave things well enough alone, and as a result, we have solid materials that are lighter than air, a fairly detailed understanding of germ theory, and smartphones.

We also have philosophical and intellectual frameworks that encourage us to treat ourselves and others with care and love, that push us to expand our intellectual horizons—both in terms of knowledge and wisdom—and which nudge us forward, while also encouraging us to refine our sense of where “forward” might take us.

A fuzzy, uncertain horizon, though, can be a stick in the spokes of an otherwise reliable, comfortable, locomotive rhythm.

Many people are experiencing different types of mourning, right now. We’re mourning lives lost to disease and violence, we’re mourning the loss of plans, goals, and even a sense of place within a system that seemed intelligible and, thus, traversable.

We mourn for milestones disrupted, relationships changed, career paths forcefully rerouted or ended, and a sense of safety that’s been replaced with the psychological equivalent of being dropped into a deep, dark, ocean. Some of us are fortunate to have life vests, others are not so fortunate; but everyone is trying not to think about what might be down there, unseen but within reach—and we’re all wondering what we’ll do if something, some thing, brushes against our legs.

There are as many legitimate ways to respond to such a situation, to such uncertainty, as there are people. Some responses are more productive than others, according to some measures of “productive,” but all are understandable within the context of our individual circumstances and experiences.

If you’re sad, that’s okay. If you’re feeling listless and unaccomplished, that’s okay. If you’re leaning into the changes and attempting to shape what happens next, keeping yourself busy with projects and goals, that’s okay, too.

If you’re uncertain about what’s happening and what happens next, and you’re hoping to make the best of a collection of largely bad things—to hopefully make things better, somehow, at some point—I hear you. That’s also okay.

Each individual step we take may or may not get us any closer to where we’d like to someday end up. But that we’re taking steps in the first place, that we’re still standing: that’s something. If we’re on the ground at this point, but figuring out how to eventually get back up: that’s something, too.

As a species, we truly suck at not knowing. But we have every reason to believe we can and will crest this horizon. And the one after this one. And the one after that.

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