Uncertainty

5/5/20

The word “uncertainty” has been a favorite in the last couple of months. The confusion and shock and fear and morbid curiosity all bundled into one word. It bears a heavy burden, that word. The truth is, there’s always uncertainty. None of us knows that we will be here tomorrow or that everyone we know will be here tomorrow. But we tell ourselves that everything will be the same — everything we know and love and cherish will be here tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and it will continue to be the same until Eventually it isn’t. Not soon. Just Eventually. We don’t have to worry about Eventually. It is way in the future, in a distant realm that we will not approach for a long, long time. We tell ourselves this story because it makes life less scary; it gives us comfort, and we need comfort more than anything. But a natural side-effect of believing this story is that we shamelessly take things for granted. We assume that everything will be the same tomorrow, so we don’t appreciate today. This is the normal uncertainty. The uncertainty that we ignore with every breath that we don’t appreciate because acknowledging its power and its beauty and its rarity would be too painful. But this is life. Life is uncertain by nature.