We can find out anything we want, whenever we want. As a child, if I wanted to find out a fact I couldn’t just google it, I had to either look it up in a book or ask someone I knew. Not only are the processes of reading or conversation far more mentally engaging (the chances are I would have found out far more in terms of the context of the fact), the lack of an instant answer required me to hold onto the burning question until I had the right means to ask it. This is an invaluable filtering process by which the question would decide for itself whether it was important enough to remember, and occasionally I’d work out an answer for myself before I had a chance to ask something.
We are also living through an age which asks us to be certain. Politically, culturally, relationally, we are pushed towards polarising opinions over topical issues for which we are deemed to be on one side or the other. The internet necessitates instant responses, so the space and time for consideration and nuance feels like it is no longer there.
The space for uncertainty is slowly being erased by technology and our political climate, which in some ways, I really don’t mind, because I find uncertainty deeply stressful. I crave completion and order, knowing that tasks are done and things are in their rightful place. Living with uncertainty wears me out, but I have to remind myself that creatively and spiritually, it’s quite often when I’m within that uncertain space that I’ll find out that there’s a deeper vein of interest than I originally considered. Sometimes it’s necessary to wrestle with the uncertainty in order to break away from the path we would have otherwise taken to find a greater freedom. That isn’t always pain free or easy, but it’s a means to learn and grow.
I remember as a teenager having a conversation with a youth leader. I arrived with an abundance of huge burning questions that I wanted answers to in order to set down the foundations of my life (we all went through that right?!). We sat for hours discussing all these topics which I presumed, as an older and wiser person in a position of leadership, he would have all the answers for. His response to so many of my huge questions was simply, “I’m not sure” or “Let me go away and think about that and I’ll come back to you." It was the most freeing and beautiful response he could have given. I wanted certainty, control and solidarity, but in his wisdom, he knew that often the truth is in the searching, within the not knowing. It’s where belief, faith and trust are required, not as a test, but a step into that which is unknown as a means of growing and learning.
He didn’t offer me certainty because life doesn’t either. In fact, the mystery, beauty, elegance and coincidence of life seem to happen when I step out onto the path less trodden, when I remove predictability. As uncomfortable as it can be, this freedom gives me space to listen to what my heart is yearning for, to what my body is asking of me, to consider what I’m feeding myself and in return how that all reveals itself within how and who I am.
This article is taken from my March Mailout, which also features some of my latest cultural highlights.
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