Imagine if when you were born you came with a detailed book of your life. It contained different chapters for the stages of your existence from birth until the day you die. Some people would have a thin book that represents a brief visit in this life. Others would have a large volume describing each decade of their much longer experience. The book would be written with certainty about the future. The details of what lies ahead available to read. The people we will meet, where we live, our career path, if we marry or not, create a family and whether we remain relatively healthy or struggle with disease.
Recently I ask our Healing the Matriarch community members how they would feel about living a life already laid out for them, and most wouldn’t prefer it this way. Yet as humans we detest uncertainty. We’d much prefer our lives to be stable and predictable. We’re not comfortable with surprises we don’t see coming and tend to resist change. Yet the reality is our life is an unpredictable path. We are experiencing things as they happen and there is no glimpse of our future available to us.
Opening that book would be an amazing thing. No surprises to navigate as we’d know what lies ahead. Change would be expected and we could plan it with certainty. Life would be easier to navigate as we’d know when things, either good or bad, were about to happen and in a way could be prepared and plan for them. This may give us less to worry about and the confidence to make decisions knowing a specific outcome for navigating ahead. Having all the details of our lives may also make us live more fully and generously rather than frittering away aimless hours. We’d be forewarned and forearmed to live more healthily, love more deeply and act more decisively when it matters. We’d more confidently ‘get our affairs in order’ as one community member mentioned.
Yet there is a flip side of this coin of certainty, our reality of living life with uncertainty. The pages of our life book open each day with potential, as nothing is yet written on each page. It’s ours to fill with new imaginings. There will still be good days and bad days but life will not be dull or boring because we’d know what’s going to happen. Admittedly, some days will feel endless as we hold onto worries, fears and sadness. Overthinking our concerns and feeling impatient for the direction life is taking us. Yet other days will provide magic that we’ll try to savour and remember with delight.
Living with uncertainty asks us to step out courageously and adventurously. Widening our life view to endless possibilities rather than allowing us to focus on the small details of our existence. It becomes a world that is awe inspiring and fosters an appreciation of our self-made growth and personal development. Even if life is going pear shaped and everything feels broken, the reality of uncertainty is that its an opportunity to reinvent – everything becomes up for grabs.
Increasingly we learn to accept and surrender to what is happening in our life, rather than focusing on how we expected it to be. In reality our life is imperfect and messy. A characteristic that makes us more vulnerable and likely to reach out to others for support when we need it. When life challenges us we learn so much and develop the kind of wisdom that only comes from our lived experience. We learn to be more humble and less self-important as life shapes us along the way. Recognizing that everyone, including ourselves, view life from our unique, personal perspective. One that is framed by our upbringing and the things that happen to us in our lives.
Finally we learn the ability to be compassionate and kind both toward ourselves and toward others. We understand that uncertainty is part of our lives and we learn to forgive ourselves and each other for mistakes made and actions we are not proud of.
A good life is about addressing what arrives each day with a tenderness and openness, and to trust that it is as it should be. The previous chapters of our life story have already been written and we can’t relive them. They have shaped us into who we are today. The gift of living an uncertain life is that we get to create each day and by our actions influence our tomorrows.