Dealing with Uncertainty

“Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.

Delicious Ambiguity.”

― Gilda Radner

We fear the unknown. We are most uncomfortable with uncertainty. But unknowns and uncertainty form the nuts and bolts of the modern life. Even when technology promises instant solutions to many problems, it has only made life more unpredictable. The uncertainty in our relationships, the changing job requirements, fascistic encroachments in politics, growing fanaticism in religion, and so forth haunt us.

Is there a way out of this?

Wise words from a poet

The sad truth is there is no way we can know everything. Hence, we keep swirling in the vortex of indecision. It makes us at once dizzy and helpless. 

Though many self-help gurus list various techniques to tackle uncertainty, I never found them effective. But recently, I came across this quotation by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke from the book ‘Letters to a young poet’. 

To set the context, Franz Xaver Kappus, a young poet who served as a cadet in the Military academy, could not decide whether to follow his heart and become a poet or choose the easy and well-trodden way of serving in the army. In 1902, he corresponded with his idol, Rainer Maria Rilke, hoping for guidance. This quote is from one of the letters the great poet sends back.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

The value of patience

At the expense of sounding philosophical, Rilke has given one of the best replies to the Kappus. He does not pretend like he knows all the answers. But he illuminates a way of thought that could alleviate the young poet’s misery.

Life puts all of us one day or the other in Kappus’ shoes. We face uncertainty. Unfortunately, our brains are wired to vehemently dislike uncertainty. But sometimes we have to live with it. Rilke asserts that the point is to live everything. Good or bad, painful or soothing, we have to live them all.

However, we try to get rid of the pain in the hope of getting to pleasure fast. But our struggles, rather than lightening the load, only make the process less bearable.

What we fail to see is that the painful process of living the question is a form of metamorphosis. Though difficult, it is necessary to make us mature and strengthen our wings. If we are ready to accept the uncertainty and live with the pain, we might, as Rilke puts it, “gradually…, live along some distant day into the answer.” 

Live the question

Kappus went on to serve 15 years in the military as an officer. But he never lost his passion for poetry. He became a newspaper editor and journalist, writing poems, humorous sketches, short stories, and novels. In the 1930s, he adapted several works, including his own, into screenplays for films. 

What if Kappus got to know this prospect while he was in the stage of indecision? It might be knee-buckling to the young, fragile military cadet wrestling with his indecision. But Kappus lived the question, the uncertainty long enough to be empowered by it. He could, thus, live the answers fully on a distant day.

This story should soothe us. My own phase of indecision on giving up a promising career to do what I love haunted me for five years. But looking back, that electrical engineer of 2014 would only be shell-shocked into inaction if he were to know the pain he has to go through to pursue a career in writing. But after almost a decade of living with the question, he is writting this blog, content with the answer his efforts provided.  

So when you are uncertain, put your trust in time. Keep doing what you should be doing. Be comfortable with uncertainty. Be courageous to live the question.

Thank you for reading. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.