The Value of Uncertainty

The Value of Uncertainty

It seems as if more than ever before — we ALL face a rising tide of uncertainty about the future — about our personal lives and the purpose and meaning of our religious, political, financial, educational, and social institutions. Right?!?

After spending time with some amazing students at the University of Iowa this week, I was reminded of how nervous I was in college, wondering what I was going to “do for the rest of my life” after graduation. The uncertainty of what would come “after” college rattled me on a daily basis. I wanted – needed? – answers but at the same time, loved my college life.

To move toward something when we cannot be assured of the outcome creates some degree of uneasiness in most of us. It’s normal. All too often it seems as if we want things in life to be predictable; we want all of our choices to be good ones. But we also long for transformation and the “next thing” (e.g., “I’m ready to graduate from college and get into the real world” or “I’m ready for a promotion” or “I’m ready to finish treatment and recover”). Predictability and transformation are not exactly congruent. The continuous strain between wanting things to stay the same and wanting things to change inevitably creates tension.

It took FBC (f-bomb breast cancer for new readers) for me to realize that one of life’s greatest teachers is uncertainty. What I’ve learned is that uncertainty (if you let it) invites us to slow down, which in turn can help us to see better and to live better.

The one certainty in life is that it is uncertain. We often try to live as though nothing will change, but it does. As always, we have a choice about how to respond, from a place of fear or a place of optimism and acceptance of what lies ahead. At this point, I choose to accept the nerve bugs, knowing that right around the corner is an opportunity to grow and learn from uncertainty.

I’d like to leave you with Rainer Maria Rilke’s philosophy on uncertainty (in his book Letters to a Young Poet):

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.