What If Uncertainty Had Purpose

As seasons turn, I am filled with joy to engage in soulful conversations that reveal our beliefs, convictions, fears, and hopes.

Global Citizen Year is an organization Julien and I looked into during our travel to volunteer. Their actions and initiatives around leadership and working with the youth are close to our principles and our vision. So when we saw they were looking for mentors to volunteer for their over 250 students enrolled in their latest Academy Leadership Program, I applied.

Among the many mentoring topics to which I felt drawn, one stood out for me: learning to embrace ambiguity and being comfortable with uncertainty. How hopeful that people half my age are being invited to look at this and are urged to open up, be vulnerable, and humble.

And while I was thinking about this topic, a question popped to mind – when, as a society, did we start learning that life was certain, measurable, linear, or comparable with others’ lives?

As I am admiring the way nature boldly comes back to life around us (in the northern hemisphere), I get inspired. A new wave of cold might come around soon and ‘affect’ the blossoming trees. Yet they can’t help blooming, if only for a day. My own experience and those of far wiser people than me, tell me life is ‘uncertain’. The more we try to control it, the less flexible we become in the face of its inevitable uncertainties. The less flexible we are, the more our solutions to address life’s challenges become narrow-minded, limiting, and unnatural. The more we implement these solutions, the more we distance ourselves from what we truly are – a tiny speck in the vast tapestry of nature.

So after these thoughts, I leave you with questions I have also been unpacking – What if uncertainty had a purpose? What would that be? What and who do we become when we observe it?