When there’s a question in the air, a fork in the road, a sudden change that cracks open the darkest chasm; that’s when we know we’ve been swallowed into the belly of the Unknown. And there, where it’s somehow absolute nothingness and every possibility all at the same time, our minds fall into fear and panic, lashing us with endless loops of questions and no answers. And as our thoughts echo off the unseen walls, we wonder how we’re ever going to deal with this unknown thing. But I want you to know this: no matter what’s suddenly thrown you into “The Unknown”, you will rise. It’s in your very nature to.
One day, the whole world woke up to the unknown
Of course the pandemic is something I’d rather forget; but one thing I’ll always remember is how the whole world suddenly woke up to the unknown. As a global community, we had no idea how it would play out, or what was going to happen next. We had no idea when it would end. If it would end.
And weirdly, while so many others around me started panicking about the “what’s next” of everyday life, I was strangely comfortable with this unknown. I realised then that as someone who’s been freelancing for most of her life, stability has become a mirage, shimmering against the stronger forces of the ebbs and the flows, the rushes and the lulls, the feasts and the famines.
More than that, as someone who lives with both bipolar disorder and fibromyalgia, even my moods, my energy levels, and the state of my body are an unfolding mystery. I never quite know how I might be feeling in body and mind a month from now, a week, even days. My life has become like a painting, an expression of chaos: sometimes painful, sometimes beautiful. And so I know that the known, the constructs of control and stability and order, are all just an illusion.
The simple truth is that we’ve always been in the unknown
Society is obsessed with planning for the unknown. Think about the relief you feel when you sign a new employment contract. “Whew,” you might say to yourself. “I’m okay now.” Or when you sign up for car insurance, home insurance, health insurance, life insurance, death and disability insurance. When you sign that marriage certificate.
We keep trying to weave this story, this illusion, that the life we’re building around us is a sure thing. But you’ve seen it, when the illusion is suddenly shattered. You’ve seen how quickly someone can lose a job. Or their health. Someone they love. You’ve seen how swiftly the whole world can turn itself inside out and upside down. Before the pandemic, most of us played out our lives within the safe confines of the known. But the truth is that we never really did live in the known. We only thought that we did.
We have always been in the unknown. We have always existed in a state of the unforeseen … we were just blissfully unaware of that fact. The perceived security we found in jobs or savings or schedules before the pandemic dissolved into ashes, leaving us naked in the face of something we didn’t recognise.
But we can take comfort in the unknown
At first, when we know that we don’t know, the wheels come off. We see psychics, we consult our horoscopes, we scan the net, we ask our friends and family for advice. We keep trying to bend our minds around the curves, desperately trying to see what’s coming next, setting up stories that tell us we’ll be okay. Because that’s really what we want to know isn’t it? That we’ll be okay.
And we will be okay. We can take comfort in the realisation that we have, actually, always faced the unknown, even if we didn’t know it then. And despite it all, somehow, we’ve always been okay. We’re here now, right?
Whatever you’re going through right now, you’re probably reading this because you’re dealing with some kind of unknown, some kind of uncertainty. The only difference between your life before and your life now is that you’re suddenly aware. And with awareness comes great strength.
It is a strength that flows through us so freely when we reach into those moments of our lives when we rose like warriors, when we went far beyond anything we ever imagined we were capable of. Because no matter how small, we’ve all done something that’s surprised our own selves.
The human spirit is a magnificent thing
You’ve seen the stories about incredible feats of strength. Those stories about overcoming the unimaginable. The showcases of human resilience and spirit. The Helen Kellers of our world. The Mayas, Malalas, and Bethany Hamiltons, the survivors and unsung heroes. The magnificence of the human spirit is everywhere.
We’re all tapped into that source of strength. All of us. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen everyday, ordinary people do extraordinary things. And I’m sure you have too. So no matter how brief a moment may have been, take yourself back to that place of triumph, to that time when you rose, blindfolded and bare, and maybe even scared … but. You. Rose.
And look at you now beautiful warrior. You’re here. You survived. I love that quote that keeps popping up all over social media, the one that goes, “So far you’ve survived 100% of your worst days. You’re doing great.” And so, slowly, slowly, each one of us weaves the threads of the vast unknown into our own story.
So maybe we should stop resisting it
It takes a lot of energy to push back against the unknown. The emotion of fear is that pushback. Worry. Panic. Anger. Frustration. They’re all resistance energies. They cloud our minds, our instincts, our power. They reduce the infinite to a sticky trickle.
But what if we gazed at the unknown with the same awe as we do the night sky? What if we paused to relish the grand scope of the wonderful mystery that it is? Full and pregnant with every possibility.
When we reframe uncertainty as a mystery, suddenly it’s not shadowed by lurking dangers anymore, now it’s a remarkable adventure, something to be curious about, playfully mused over, maybe even something to get excited about.
Trust that wherever you place your next step, the ground will hold you. That flowers will spring at your feet. I often hear older people say that no matter how many wrong turns they may have made, they still landed up in the perfect place.
But to be honest, I’m not always at peace with the unknown. I’m not always comfortable with uncertainty. There are plenty of times I manage to twist myself into frazzled knots and loops, twisting myself into a panic. Sometimes I don’t care about the mystery. I just want to know that something will catch me if I fall. And that’s especially when I have to bring myself back to a place of trust. When I have to remind myself that this is just a chapter and not the whole story, that I’m still writing it, that there could be beauty and magic and wonder just waiting to be unwrapped.
So I try to remind myself that it’s not about trying to deal with the unknown at all. I just have to trust that it could be the door to something wonderful.
