Trading certainty for trust.

The necessity of shattered illusions.

Remaining without a plan.

I moved to Chicago after graduating college with no expectations. I remember thinking, I guess I’ll just figure it out when I get there. A few months in, I decided I would move back to California, and then a few days after that, I met some enchanting people who represented the promise of a beautiful social life that was indeed fulfilled. So I stayed for another year and a half. I did figure it out, as one always does.

The relationship between stability and adventure is one I am greatly interested in. A big part of me is driven to seek new experiences, to go out, taste, and explore. Another part of me needs the solid foundations of close friendships and routines, which require time and consistency.

Now, as I continue to traverse the void and feel where my next steps are, I’m struck with a sense of more pressure than I’ve felt before. Approaching my next chapter with openness and as few expectations as possible still feels right, but I am visited by the haunting insistence that I must determine my career path and life plan. When I think about what I’m afraid of in accepting a new job or place to live, it’s that I’ll have to abandon my curiosity for the sake of stability. A fear of settling down, of stagnancy.

For those who feel similarly to me, the question is: can we honor our curiosity and desire for newness without sacrificing closeness and security? It does not, of course, have to be as extreme as choosing either adventure or stability. It can be a balance, that requires respecting all of our parts, as they make themselves known.

Trusting transitoriness.

When life asks you to trade some sense of perceived stability for definite uncertainty, the experience is often accompanied by the realization that even stability stands on unstable legs.

The crises and moments of chaos in my life have been increasingly easier to deal with, as I have come to more fully understand impermanence. Remember that it must change is a useful mantra. The practice is to resist clinging to any internal state or external circumstance, because it will change. Clinging, as the Buddha has taught, perpetuates suffering.

Meditation teaches this simple wisdom, that everything changes regardless of whether or how we exert control. Thoughts simply arise and fall away, and if you’re present, you never really know what thought will come next. This is, of course, true of all of life. We do not know what the next moment will bring, because we haven’t experienced it yet. The illusion of certainty is just that — an illusion.

If we cannot be certain of anything, we can at least find something to trust in. This necessarily begs the question: how do we know what to trust? If everything is fleeting, by its very nature transitory, what do we have faith in?

It may be that what we choose to trust can be verified only through our personal experimentation. What’s it like to try believing this? See if it works. Adjust accordingly.

When I think about what I trust, it’s a mix of what I want to trust and what I’ve noticed through experimentation is pretty reliably trustworthy. I trust my body to guide me in my direction. I trust myself to figure things out, and life to help me do so. I trust the power of honesty, and I trust the persistence of goodness in humanity. It may sound naïve, but as Maria Popova says, we do have a tendency to “[dismiss] anything sincere and true as simplistic or naïve — even if, or precisely because, we know that all real truth and sincerity are simple by virtue of being true and sincere.”¹

Often the most profound truths are the most obvious. Perhaps what deserves our deepest trust is just right at the surface, staring back at us.

And so it is.

We cannot control what ideas pop into our heads, who we will meet, or when we will meet them. We cannot control how we will feel, or whether what we have built will fall apart.

Whatever happens next will be what happens next. What if we stopped pretending like we know what that will be?

If neither predicting nor controlling is an option, may we just practice being present in this moment. And the next one.

Let the shattering of certainty commence. May it be gentle.

Maggie

1. Maria Popova of The Marginalian. Cited from this article on Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings.