Getting by with uncertainty

Learning to not know

The Great (Hulu)

I have recently lost my job. My mind swirls with an endless list of tasks: updating my CV, my portfolio and my personal website, posting more on LinkedIn, finishing work at my current job, learning new skills, finding networking events to go to...It has definitely been a very exhausting month.

I'm not gonna lie, it is scary to lose your job while living abroad. I certainly don't feel as safe. Probably something to do with the fact that both times I was unemployed I moved back home with my parents, and now that's not really an option. Gladly, I'm in Europe and there are so many safety nets to lay on, even for the self-employed, like I currently am.

It's the uncertainty of it all that gets to me the most. Not knowing how long I will be unemployed, what my next job will be, if I will like it or not, if I'll have to stop working remotely, if I should start cutting expensese, if I should schedule that vacation or not...So much is completely unknown.

Me, you and everyone else hate uncertainty. Even though, in reality, there is no absolute certainty in life¹. I've written about this before, but it's definitely something I struggle with, especially now.

Not knowing is also letting go

There's something else I struggle with, accepting that things take the time they take.

Once upon a time, we were more connected to nature, to cycles, to how long it took to grow our food. Now, we don’t even know which season which fruit grows. After all, we can eat apples 365 days a year. It's always apple season somewhere on the planet.

Everything is available, so we don't have to wait. We don't need to know how long it takes between an apple seed and when a tree is ready to produce apples. Because we don't follow the whole process, we forget there is one to beggin with. We forget that everything takes its time.

The caterpillar will need time to become a butterfly, the baby will take the time it will take to grow and come out to the world, the plant will carry at its pace. As much as we want to think that we are something special and separate from the rest of the planet, we are not. Everything takes its time. There's no point in worrying or hurrying.

It is a challenge. We want immediate answers. Everything in our society seems immediate. We don't feel relaxed about not knowing and waiting. It's almost like a punishment nowadays.

Although it brings us enormous anxiety, we should try reconciling with the fact that we have very small control over our lives and what will happen. No matter how much of a control freak you are, most things will play out as they will. Actually, it's extremely rare that something works out as planned.

Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)

There's not much we can do about this feeling, other than understanding it and see it in another light.

We are always attempting to cope with the uncertainty of life. Not knowing what comes next can be stressful. We are constantly afraid of the future because of the adverse experiences that may come our way — losing a job, being in a car accident, or the death of a family member. Most of us will instantly jump to the worst possible scenario in our heads.

But often, unexpectedly positive things will also happen. Take a moment to recall. I bet there’s so much that has happened to you that you weren’t expecting and had an immense positive consequences for your future. Meeting a future partner on a trip by chance, someone hiring you when you weren't expecting, moving to another city and it becoming home, discovering an exciting hobby you didn’t know you liked, meeting your best friend at a random party...

What if instead of imagining all the terrible things that might happen, you asked yourself: how will my life improve?

There are probably exciting and unexpected experiences coming. You know, trust the universe, or something like that. :)

Even if I end up being unemployed for many months, this time will still allow me to learn new skills, meet new people, and better understand my future path. Not to be annoying, but if you think about it positive experiences are always found during negative periods in our lives.

Who knows? Maybe I'll look back and losing this job was exactly what I needed.

To wrap-up I'll quote Alice Walker because I think she writes a billion times better than I:

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don't even recognize that growth is what is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumble on a book or a person who explained it to us, that we were actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.

Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleseant. But what is most unplesant is not the knowing what is happening…

Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those perios that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”

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Kafka on The Shore by Haruki Muramaki

Kafka on the Shore is probably the most read Japanese book in the world. It is filled with the sense that we cannot escape our destinies. It tells the story of Kafka Tamura who runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophecy. It also tells the story of Nakata, an older man with mysterious powers. Both of them are on interconnected journeys, which feels unstoppable.

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Yorgos Lanthimos loves exploring themes like social pressure, manipulation, beliefs, death and character’s motivations. I am not even sure I enjoyed this movie. It's super weird and long. It has three different stories inside it, which makes it confusing. Still, it does fit the topic very well. It talks a lot about how we cannot deal with uncertainty and things being how they are. This is to the point of accepting others to make all decisions for you or obsessing about finding someone with the power to bring people back to life. In the end, life is still random. Watch this movie if you are on one of those days you want to watch something weird (these days exist, to me at least).

The Great (Hulu but it's on HBO in Belgium)

A young Catherine is sent to Russia to be married to the emperor Peter III. There she finds herself destined to run the country. To do that she needs to raise a coup against her silly, immature, and frequently violent husband. It talks a lot about destiny, especially in the third and final season, but also about how random life can be, continually throwing Catherine and everyone around her out of their plans. With great casting, writing, and costumes, this show is a lot of fun. But be aware that it is not historically accurate at all.

1. Only that we will eventually die.