Uncertainty is the curriculum.

I read a quote in Brené Brown's new book, Strong Ground, and had to write it down immediately.

Resist the urge to reach for certainty where it does not exist.

We love to do this, don’t we?

We love to invent certainty, to tell stories about certainty, to feign certainty, to glorify certainty (I need to feel more confident before I...) and we definitely love to reach for it unceasingly.

But what if it’s simply not there?

What then?

I call this spiritual fitness. 

Resisting the urge to reach for certainty where there is none is a form of strength training. 

It requires us to override all the narratives espousing clarity and KNOWING as the ultimate necessity. 

It asks us to rumble with the paradox that safety is critical, and also untenable, and also ever present—my friend Don Rosenthal used to say that if dying is ultimately safe, then how can we ever be unsafe?

In “The Four Fold Way” Angeles Arrien names “THE NEED TO KNOW” as one of the four universal human addictions. Grasping for certainty, knowledge and intellect seems to be a power move in our scramble for safety, but leaves us relying on illusion to comfort ourselves.

I’m remembering a line from “The Prisoner of Azkaban” where the kids are talking about trying to capture ‘notorious mass murderer’ Syrius Black… 

“It's like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands.”

That what it's like to grasp at certainty.

Of course, the obvious truth is that uncertainty IS the curriculum.

Which means that our work is to relax into it, welcome it, and build our resiliency by spending our time making beauty instead of fretting about everything that’s uncertain.

When I don’t know what’s happening, or what to do next, or how to proceed, here are the things I turn to:

✨ I take walks.

✨ I sing. I play guitar.

✨ I create—write, paint, make music.

✨ I call a friend or ally. 

✨ I visit with a wise teacher in some form.

✨ I make a healthy meal, drink water, and make tea.

Final thought: if I were living in a war zone like Gaza, Haiti, the Sudan, Ukraine, or the Congo, this conversation on safety in uncertainty would have a different spin. I’m privileged to feel utterly safe in my home and hometown. And, as our US government moves more and more toward fascism, the certainty that I’ve always taken for granted as a United States citizen is feeling… shaky. It’s another day in paradox.