Let’s not worry but make merry with uncertainty
It’s an obvious fact that we all love certainty because we feel safe when we know about everything, isn’t it? It’s like we are more comfortable going to an event if a known friend will also be attending the event or else we may feel awkward amongst the unknown faces. If we are going to a place, we tend to prefer the streets which we are familiar with rather than taking an unknown route because we don’t want to get lost. Since our childhood, we have been taught to get good grades so that we get admission into a good college for some good degree to build a good career so that we get a good partner to have good kids then plan for a good retirement and finally wait for a good death. What does “good” mean? It means a kind of security or certainty. We try to use familiar patterns to predict the future although these patterns don’t guarantee certainty. There is a thin line between hope and obsessive expectation which leads to the fear of uncertainty. There will always be “what if” condition in any damn situation of life.
Although it’s completely okay to seek certainty in something we can control. But can we control everything? I am not advocating to be someone who lives at the mercy of situations. You should gather as much information as possible before starting anything but can we get every information? Like, if you go for a job interview, you know how much will be your salary every month, but do you know that the company will never fire you? You know about your products/services and customers but do you know that your customers will never switch to your competitor? Some people feel secure if they have a good relationship status but they forget that even some married couples get divorced. In the end, our need for complete certainty can’t be satisfied no matter what we do. No matter how much information or validation we seek, we will never know what happens tomorrow, how other people will behave with us or how our lives will be in the next ten years. In the last one year, I have also experienced uncertain things happening in my personal life. It was an unpleasant experience for me to realize that a business in which I invested my ten precious years collapsed in no time due to some factors which were completely out of my control. I never saw it coming but then I learnt not to judge myself by my past as it was just a life event, not a life sentence so better learn from it and move on. One of the reasons, why I am writing this article is that I do want to reinforce myself with this sense of acceptance towards uncertainties in life. There is no escape.
Even quantum physics emphasizes the idea of uncertainty which has inspired the script of many Hollywood movies on subjects like multiple realities. It only talks about the probability of an outcome but never guarantees anything as such. Even the best of artificial intelligence can also predict something based on some familiar past data but that is just an interpretation of the past outcomes not ensuring the certainty of any future outcome in an absolute sense. Uncertainty is the mother of all scientific experiments. Was Thomas Edison sure about how many attempts will it take to invent the bulb? In a broader sense, uncertainty leads to experiment and experiment leads to an opportunity to do or create something which has never been seen or thought before. So, uncertainty does not mean that things will always turn out badly, it simply means that we don’t know.
Let’s ponder over situations when we embrace uncertainty. Like, when we read a new book, we don’t directly jump to the epilogue rather we enjoy the uncertainty of every chapter. We hate spoilers about our favorite TV series because we want to enjoy the uncertainty of every episode. When we board a plane, we don’t know whether the pilot or the plane itself is in good condition or not but we fly with it anyway. When we go on the first date with someone, travel to a new place or try an adventure we have not done before, aren’t we already accepting uncertainty, though unconsciously?
We need to embrace little more uncertainty in other areas of life too. Since we have been nurtured to look for security and certainty in life, so any conscious idea of uncertainty creates anxiety and keeps us awake at night, obsessing over ways to protect ourselves from anything that might go wrong. Currently, people all across the world are feeling afraid of the social, financial and health uncertainties due to the coronavirus crisis. At times, I felt more stressed due to uncertain predictions than the actual scenario. The panic due to the pandemic is more deadly than the virus itself. The more we worry about uncertainties, the greater we think that something bad will happen. When we are worried, we might see threats where there are none. Fear leads to speculations and speculations lead to more fear and the loop continues without any relevant action. They rightly say that “worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere”.
When nothing is certain, anything is possible and it’s completely okay not to know about something. This is crucial for our peace of mind. We can practice defensive pessimism considering the worst that can happen and plan about how to handle it. At max, we can plan and prepare for different possibilities so that we could befriend with uncertainties to feel more peaceful and worry less. When we obsess about tomorrow which we can’t control, we are too busy judging the things which have not happened yet to fully experience things that are happening right now. We overlook the little things we can do to make life easier and better while being restless about the big things we can’t do. In the holy Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna said: “Do your duty without worrying about the outcome”. So, it is better to focus on things under your circle of influence, live in the moment and embrace the adventure of living. Let’s not be a control freak rather try to adopt flexibility. Certainty or security is a cage which takes away our freedom of mind and consequently, we prefer to complain in our lives than taking the necessary risk to fix it. What’s coming tomorrow is not certain, but what’s certain is that it will come, and when it gets here, we can respond to it, learn from it and move into another tomorrow with endless possibilities. It is rightly said that “uncertainty is the only certainty in life.” So, let’s not worry but make merry with it.
