The Uncertain Theme of My Life - Issue #2
Tolerate Uncertainty or Live Miserably
This is not to say that I have mastered the art of tolerating uncertainty, but I can now pinpoint why I'm having an uptick in anxiety and do something about it, whereas before I would keep going round and round along the familiar hamster wheel of anxious searching in the hopes of finding the definitive answer that would stop it all and make me feel better. That answer doesn't exist.
As soon as I get back to the truth that I am human and not God, and will never (or at least not yet) have the definitive answers to all the things I want answers to now because I'm not all-knowing, I can rest and have peace.
That requires humility, which is kind of ironic isn't it?
The anxious rarely suspect they're really struggling with the deadliest of the seven deadly sins--pride. But that's what it is. And pride makes us so miserable. Pride brings misery, and humility brings that deep, deep sigh of relief.
My Uncertain Week
It has been an uncertain seven to ten days, and my anxiety has predictably reared its head. So many questions. Will we get to buy that house we really like? Will our house sell so we can? (It's not looking very promising at the moment, honestly.) Will I be able to finish my novel, 27? Will I be able to raise enough money to republish The Pursuit of Elizabeth Millhouse? What if I finish 27 and don't like it? What if nobody else likes it? What if I publish both novels, and I don't make any of my money back?
What if? What if? What IF?
Even If, I Will Anyway
And so I keep on. There are no answers to those questions. God knows the answers and He will let me know when it's time. And if I wait for certainty to do a good thing, then I'll wait until I'm dead. So, here goes nothing or a lot of something. Or a little of both in the grand scheme of things. I'm letting my imagination run wild and putting it down on paper. It is the healthiest thing for an anxious soul to do.
Because as G. K. Chesterton once said:
"To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."
-- Orthodoxy
Here's a cat I met once. This cat isn't worried about a thing because cats don't try to get the heavens into their heads like we do. Let us all be like this cat.
