Don't Get Comfortable Yet
Resisting the urge to seek security
Above: Between two ferns? Try mountains.
Hello! How are you? I’m typing this out at my (or rather, my boyfriend’s) one-bedroom apartment in the small city where I live during the week and lately, most weekends too. The weather is beautiful – summer has arrived and it’s never all that hot here – and later, I’ll drive an hour into the countryside where there’s an old family house I bring my son to so we can have alone time together. Otherwise, I’m only able to see him at his dad’s place in the city, which is about a twenty-minute walk away.
Sound complicated? That’s just my living arrangements. My work and personal life are equally messy and humming along in a state of protracted transition: there’s unmistakable progress towards long-term stability, but it’s not necessarily linear or free of compromise. My anxiety is much reduced as I mostly feel good about where I am, but there are still plenty of days that feel difficult. There are still parts of my life I do not like at all, such as not being able to live with my child.
When I step back and examine my life through a larger lens, I can see that this transition really began when I completed my PhD in early 2017. It’ll likely be a couple more years before I’m settled in a situation that isn’t temporary, so it’s fair to call this a messy decade. My messy decade. I remember how, when I was young, I’d be embarrassed about a transition phase that lasted six months or a year. Get older and hey, you too may discover that messiness can last for a decade!
When life feels insecure and you’re not sure what direction you’re headed, when you’re in between identities and you’ve left an old life behind but haven’t yet settled into a new one, I think it’s only natural to seek out security in any form. But what I’m trying to learn right now is how to tolerate prolonged uncertainty in order to remain open to the self-knowledge it can impart.
It’s safe to say that all cultures heavily shaped by the demands of late-stage capitalism tend to value forward momentum and clarity. After all, who are we if we’re not productive or achieving? The workplace punishes those who take time off for sustained periods. Even as we labour, we’re pushed to hit predictable milestones: graduation, job, career markers, marriage, children, midlife, retirement. And for generations now, that so-called forward momentum has been punctuated by major purchases ranging from a university degree to our first car, a condo or a house, a larger house, and so on. We might follow our own path, but we will nonetheless face pressure to be somewhere at some point, be someone others recognize.
Woven into the fabric of this culture are beliefs that if we just do something a certain way, some outcome will follow. If we’re lovable, we’ll find someone who wants to make a lifetime commitment. We’ll have a baby, we’ll create that family. If we’re responsible, if we’re hard-working, we’ll acquire that thing or attain that goal or manifest that dream. If we manage our resources and cultivate our interests and invest in connection, we’ll be happy or at least some full version of ourselves. We’ll have made progress towards more, always more.
But what happens when we’re between two selves, two seasons of life? We’ve shed some old version of ourselves, but don’t yet know who we are becoming or where we’re going. There’s no forward momentum because we’re simply treading water or running in place. And when we’re neither here nor there, the desire to skirt the uncertainty by reaching for security is understandable – all the more so in a culture that sees uncertainty as a flaw, a personal failure, perhaps even dangerous.
Here, I think, is where reframing can be helpful. Maybe instead of robbing us of the certainty of movement towards a milestone, uncertainty grants us the freedom to explore and build and grow. Being uncertain naturally means being open to what lies beyond what we already know. It pries open space for possibility outside of those familiar, culturally-imposed beats. It offers us time to become aware of and work through the emotional patterns that lock us into repetitive behaviours, recreating the past over and over again.
The natural driver of a willingness to tolerate uncertainty is curiosity. What happens if we wait instead of reaching for the milestone or purchase or plan it feels like we’re supposed to have? What happens if we let the unknown unfold and trust that no matter what happens, we’ll be able to deal with it? Interestingly, there’s research to support the idea that
curious people who can tolerate the stress of uncertainty are more willing to express dissent at work and are actually more engaged at work. They tend to have more pleasurable moments in life and higher life satisfaction. When you’re open and curious to all of life, both the good and bad parts [emphasis mine], you can thrive.
We can build “uncertainty tolerance” by becoming curious about ourselves. Who would I have been if I hadn’t reached for marriage over law school when I was in my early 20s? Who will I be if I wait for marriage now, and simply allow my relationship to bend and curve around our growth? Who will I be if I confront my fear of being trapped and embrace this uncertain path towards stability instead of relocating to a country where the job market is easier to navigate and far more familiar? What will happen if I allow myself to move through this period of high uncertainty instead of running away from it?
More self knowledge encourages us to trust our own judgment and ability, creating a sense of certainty about ourselves: we know that no matter what, we’ll be able to handle life as it comes. As our certainty in ourselves grows, we’ll no longer need certainty in our circumstances. We’ll tame that impulse to reach for something outside of ourselves for security and stability, because we’ll find that source within.
Above: Dawn from the shore, a couple mornings ago.
If I sit still and let my heart slide into the well of my emotions, it will ricochet off of grief, deep grief, over not being able to provide a home for my son where he can live with me for half of the time. I grieve the days and months that have slipped away as I’ve tried to maintain an emotional presence in his life to make up for my unprecedented physical absence. I mourn the lost mornings making breakfast, the dinners not shared, the abrupt end to reading stories before bed, and a whole year without hearing him call for me while walking in the door after school. As I watch the bones of his face slowly rearrange themselves into something less babyish and more mature, hinting at the man he will become, I fight the urge to cry. Below that grief lies a black pool of depression, so I reach down and catch my heart before it lands and sinks into those murky depths.
This morning, I woke up before 5 AM to drop my boyfriend off at a stop for the airport bus. Next to the building where he lives, there’s a park crowning the tip of a peninsula. After re-situating my car on the street, I walked over to stand on a beach and watch the sky brighten to reveal an unusually calm ocean. As burnt orange and dusky pink hues deepened on the horizon, the water took on a glassy quality and the effect was otherworldly. Seagulls flew back and forth, wingtips skimming the surface as waves quietly lapped at the shore. Squirrels chased and chided while birdsong greeted the light. All was still and quiet, yet also coming to life.
Here, too, is a well of emotion. Here is a feeling of peace, of gratitude. Here is a sense that the earth can hold me in its palm, that my messy decade is meaningless against the continuity of the trees and the ocean. Into this well, I let my heart slide and there, I find strength.
For more moody reflections on uncertainty and self-knowledge, see:
Needed to hear/read this today. You are a talented writer/artist that brings perspective and some peace to those of us along that messy decade journey. Hope you continue to share your experiences and stories. TY