Uncertainty and the Art of Allowing What is

How do you sit with it? With the uncertainty?

When I first realized all the ways I was clinging and grasping for security, I got right to work, peeling back the layers of protection I had built up over the years. This is what I call the Great Undoing: consciously rebuilding my life, while simultaneously stripping it down to the studs.

In the last ten years, I’ve exited an eighteen-year marriage, gone back to school, changed careers, raised my children, and have worked so very hard to maintain a stable foundation for myself and my kids. But what do you do when the stable foundation isn’t enough? Why does it still feel like the ground could give way beneath me at any moment? I’m pretty sure this is a trauma response to living through late-stage capitalism.

Over the years, I’ve traded grasping for trusting. In the universe and in my own instincts. When the doubt was especially loud, I would deliberately look for resonance, what some call glimmers, as reassurance and as a guide. That practice is what helped me find my higher purpose and a new career path. I even coined my own mantra to keep myself steady:
Just keep walking, one step at a time, toward the horizon. There is no destination, but as long as you’re moving toward the light, it will be okay.
It still works on me to this day.

I thought the healing journey would make the pain of uncertainty go away. But here I am, ten years in, and the discomfort is just as loud and unforgiving as it’s ever been. I’m tired of knowing where it comes from, of looking directly at it without any new ideas for how to dance with it. These bodies of ours are hard work. I’m like my own pet dog: I have to walk myself, feed myself, put myself to sleep, socialize, and supplement. And yet, all I really want is to jump the fence and sprint through the neighbour’s fields.

I’ve been walking toward the horizon for a good five years now. If I’m honest, somewhere deep down I believed there would be an arrival. That if I threw caution to the wind long enough and braved the elements of this passage, there would be a shore of safety where I could finally rest. Instead, I often find myself resentful of the razor-thin margins we all live within, trying to carve out a life that feels both meaningful and secure.

I know the world is full of endless possibilities, and that gives me hope. But it also stirs a deep restlessness in me.

The Dao teaches non-striving, moving with what is, instead of forcing outcomes. Yin and yang aren’t problems to solve but opposite energies that are dependant on one another: rest and movement, safety and risk. I live in a culture that values predictability and security, and that has shaped me more than I like to admit. At the same time, there’s another current in me, always wanting to move forward and see what else is possible. These two energies aren’t canceling each other out. They are in relationship, continually shaping how I meet this life.

I guess I have answered my own question through the process of writing this. The anxiety that comes from not knowing how things will turn out is something I need to accept and witness. But you can be sure I will be open to those random moments of joy and inspiration to guide me.