When Nothing Is Certain
As I write this, the world is experiencing a moment of collective uncertainty. A novel virus, one that we have defined but don’t yet fully understand, has brought humanity to its knees. We do not know how to cure it. We do not know how to prevent its spread, other than by preventing ourselves from living in the way we had previously been living. We do not know how long we will need to do this. We are afraid of what we do not know.
We are living in a state of uncertainty, and it is killing us. The false framework around which our lives are built has come tumbling down: the daily commute, the child’s school day, the weekly happy hour, Grandma’s Sunday night dinners. Until now, we could rely on these things to give shape and meaning to our lives. To fill the uncertain hours with plans and purpose, to lull ourselves into believing that we knew what was going to happen next.
And now, here we are.
At first, it felt like pressing a pause button. Putting a temporary hold on “real life” while we let the scientists and medical professionals sort out a few things. We tried to pass the time quietly and without much fussing. Helpful articles appeared for us to read, advising us on the best Netflix shows to binge-watch. We cleaned out our garages, organized our basements. We taught ourselves how to bake bread. Thumbs twiddling, we told ourselves, “be patient. The time will come when it is safe to start living again.”
The time passed, and passed some more. And we started to understand that the world is not on pause. There is no pause. Our life is happening, right now. This is what life looks like without the illusion of certainty.
Personally, one of my biggest struggles is accepting the discomfort of uncertainty. I have spent most of my life trying to avoid it at all costs. Whether I was facing challenges in school, work, or relationships, I felt like I needed to get as quickly as possible from the point of opening up an inquiry to the point of finding an answer or resolution. That ugly middle phase between asking and answering has always been the most frightening place for me to rest. In it, I can feel the discomfort rising from the pit of my stomach, up through the muscles lining my ribs, settling in my skin. Because when I’m in that phase, the only thing that is certain is, of course, uncertainty. It is also, I am now coming to realize, the frontier in which learning and growing take place.
About four years ago, I began studying the creative process. I did this mostly because I felt like I had somehow snuck my way into a creative career without having any clue how to actually be creative. What I have learned, and am continuing to learn, is that creativity comes from sitting with discomfort. I can be curious enough to ask the questions, but if I’m not ready to put in the awkward hours of hand to paper or fingers to keys to make physical that nebulous cloud of uncertainty in which the answers lie, somewhere, I’m never going to find them. The process is hard. But it’s through the process that truth is revealed. And truth is worth seeking.
Still, I could know this, and yet. And yet. Somehow, I would avoid truly engaging in the process because it was just too uncomfortable. Mental uncertainty is one thing. But to actually see it, before my very eyes, in the form of an unfinished piece of writing, a photographic outtake. It gutted me every time.
So, frankly, I did my best to avoid it. Knowing that most of creative engagement would be, for me, painstakingly uncomfortable, I just found a lot of excuses not to engage. I was so busy. So tired. And when I did dare to engage, I only did so knowing I could see something through to the end, working in long, intense stretches of time. I couldn’t risk getting stuck in the middle of something and being left in uncertainty purgatory. I knew it was a place that I couldn’t bring myself to return to.
Then I had a baby. And my relationship to uncertainty is now forever changed. Gone are the days in which I could pursue a project from start to certainty in one intense burst. Discomfort is now the unwanted companion that has set up camp in my home and doesn’t plan on leaving any time soon. With it has come a boy, a wonderful, incredible human who is living and growing here. He is stuck perpetually in that frontier between the inquiry and the answer, and feeling his own discomfort in it every day. I observe and I want to fix things. I want to take away his uncertainty in order to soothe my own discomfort with both of our not-knowing. But through watching him I learn that life is not-knowing, that knowing with absolute certainty is its own kind of death. It’s certainly the death of truly living.
So, learning how to be a parent is changing my relationship to certainty, and I am starting to feel brave enough to face the creative process again, slowly, without shying away from the discomfort. And I’m looking around and marveling at how, by a bizarre twist of fate, the entire world is here, with me, in that uncomfortable, uncertain place right now. Can we feel a certain strength in knowing that we are all living each day from the same place of not-knowing, together? What will we collectively learn from this?
There is no tidy solution here. All we can do is sit with the discomfort. Find our breath. Recognize fear when it is happening. Breathe. Step forward. Breathe again. Pick up the next foot. Keep breathing. This is life. Life is hard. We are here. We are living.
