Uncertainty

I’ve been struggling with something lately. A feeling I didn’t quite recognize at first. It started poking out in unusual places, like a misplaced thread of a sweater. Appearing where it didn’t belong. Irritation at the weather. Technology frustration. My creative work. It took me a while to put my finger on it.

Uncertainty.

Grasping for a stable footing. A bit of wisdom. A concrete fact. For something, anything to just be knowable. How long. How far. How much.

So much these days feels tenuous. Unembraceable. A delicate balance of not enough/ too much. Of adamant contradictions screamed loudly from silent screens. The days are getting longer, but they’re being filled with more of the same, the mess expanding to fill the space. It’s exhausting.

It makes me crave certainty like a big fat cheeseburger. Like a hot summer’s day. Like things I don’t even really want but suddenly need because they’re precisely what they ought to be. Comforting. Real. Black and white. With no pink.

The only things that feel certain right now are negatives, absences. Tears in the fabric of space-time. You can’t do this. It won’t work. It’s not going to happen. They make us feel even more hollow inside. It’s no wonder we’re downing bread by the loaf.

I’ve been trying to find solace in the things I can control, or things I used to think I did. But it’s only making me more aware of what it outside my grasp. When things like toilet paper become uncertain, is it any wonder we lose it when the wifi won’t connect?

Certainty, I’ve decided, is like an orchid bloom. It’s beautiful when it happens. But if you try to hold onto it too tightly, you can crush it in the process. It’s best to appreciate it from a gentle distance.

Maybe it isn’t even real, I don’t know. Maybe it’s all an illusion. That when the winds of fate were at our back we thought we had something to do with it. But maybe all we did was turn our sail in the right direction.

And now, our sails hang heavy and our boats float uneasily along. If we try to steady them, to force them to stay still, we only wear ourselves out in the process. We need a good wind at our back, and until that comes, to maybe just let go already and go with the proverbial flow.

I look down at my creative work and loosen my grip. I let the boat wobble. Let the waves carry me. Relax into the unsteadiness of the process. It isn’t going anywhere.

Neither am I.