Trusting Uncertainty and Trusting Yourself.
Voids revisited, and waiting to see what happens.
Voids, revisited: trusting uncertainty and trusting yourself.
I’ve written at length about voids: those dark stretches of uncertainty we find ourselves traversing after leaving or being left by something. Voids arise when what felt solid or stable suddenly disappears, and what is coming to fill that place is not yet clear. Voids are where the most potent magic happens, because they are where we are most vulnerable: we are exposed, destabilized, and confronted by the unknowable, malleable future. If we can become familiar with ourselves in the void, we can work with it; we can dance with the uncertainty rather than be swallowed by it. With patience, we may even start to trust that the void is actually exactly where we need to be.
I’ve moved three times in the last eight months, careening in and out of different voids in different parts of the country. The first was the most harrowing—I was deeply paranoid then, and in an effort to feel full and satisfied, I scrambled to fill the holes of my life with stuff I thought would feel right, ignoring—although always noticing—the periodic hits of “you can’t stay here” and “this isn’t it”. Eventually acting on that intuition led me somewhere else.
This most recent move has been remarkably easier and more correct. It feels better. In questioning why this is true, the answer boils down to me trusting uncertainty, and trusting myself. This void feels deeply welcoming: I don’t know what or where or to whom it’s bringing me, but I know that I can trust it. This isn’t to say that I expect everything to be easy and fun forever; attempting to escape challenge and avoid pain won’t ever be worthwhile or achievable. But, I no longer find myself fearfully struggling to manipulate the unknown: for the most part, I am in deep trust of it. This attitude is not reliant on outcome, but one that informs my ability to respond to whatever comes. I trust myself because I know I will respect my intuition; I trust the void because I know it’s bringing me where I want to be going.
Remembering how to trust yourself requires patience and experimentation. It often starts with simply being willing to see that we can trust ourselves; that we are open and want to do so. Show me that I can be trusted is a good request to ask of life.
Along with this openness, we must be willing to try trusting ourselves so that we can learn that it actually works. We need to give life a chance to show us that we are indeed worthy of being trusted. Trust in self and trust in life walk hand in hand: when you trust yourself to handle what life brings, you can trust that life will bring you what you’re able to handle—and even, often, what you want to be experiencing.
Here now, only and always.
It has become more comfortable to give up pretending like I know what’s coming; it feels more honest. I’d rather breathe and wait to see what happens, than try to predict and control and likely be wrong and disappointed.
As Ram Dass said, the best preparation for the future is to be grounded in the present—to be here now, as my forearm reads.1 Life will continue to change every moment, and the best we can do to plan for what’s next is to be here, now.
From “The Paradox of Planning for the Future”:
“When you initially arrive into a new situation, the optimum strategy for dealing with that situation is to quiet down and hear the totality of what’s going on around you. To hear all of the variables and how they are all working together, just in a quiet intuitive way, out of which will come an optimum action. [T]he more fully you are present in that moment of decision making, the more you can expect an optimum response. Optimum in the sense of it being in the deepest harmony on the most planes of reality.2
…The fullness of being in this moment, which includes the future and its plans, is the best preparation for when that time is here now. So being here now is the best preparation for when you are there then or when there then is here now.”
We cannot really know what will happen next: this can begin to feel more exciting than terrifying; more comforting than unsettling. Our lives will continue to be orchestrated of their own accord, seemingly without much need of our mental construction. Maybe we are just here to feel and enjoy the ride.
May we trust ourselves and trust the void, and wait to see what emerges.
Maggie
The truest words I could tattoo on my body, I think.
From Ram Dass’ speech “The Paradox of Planning for the Future”.