Living in the Ambiguity and Uncertainty of Life

The beauty and the pain of living with impermanence and uncertainty.

In Pema Chodron’s book, “Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change” she writes:

“The Buddha called impermanence one of the three distinguishing marks of our existence, an incontrovertible fact of life. But it’s something we resist pretty strongly. We think if we did this or didn’t do that, somehow we could achieve a secure, dependable, controllable life. How disappointed we are when things don’t work out quite the way we planned.”

Trying to wrestle with uncertainty and ambiguity is exhausting. Of course we want stability. Something solid to reflect back to us that everything will be alright. So what happens if instead of fighting against uncertainty we come to some sort of internal truce? What if living in the space of uncertainty and impermanence is really the threshold where you can actually feel more freedom and more alive? What if this is a chance to become more PRESENT and fully take in the gifts of each day?

When we expect that circumstances, others around us and our internal lives will and should always be the same, we push against the tide and inevitability of this impermanence and become complacent or live in constant fear. Even more dangerous, we stop taking risks for what we want and what we believe in. We sit back into the status quo and start another form of death where we don’t push ourselves to grow because we stop taking risks. We become afraid to embrace our human condition of impermanence and the fact that nothing, ever, really stays the same.

Unfortunately there is no cure for being human. But we do have a choice in how we react in times of uncertainty and ambiguity. We can relax and move into the uncertainty as a fact of life that is always there whether we want to see it or not, and look for and take advantage of the openings for new life or new opportunities to begin. OR we can retreat, gripping and hanging on for any control we can muster.

Maybe there is a middle ground…that internal truce I mentioned before. We aim for stability, we try to build our foundations while we also let the winds blow, we let the waters flow through and the ground crack open, knowing that this is also part of life, and it reminds us to wake up, to stay present, and remember when we connect with this fact, we can feel most alive.