The Beauty Behind The Uncertain
Why You Shouldn’t Fear It
Uncertainty. Ever felt that way? I’m talking about the feeling that makes your stomach feel weird. The one that sends you into the depths of your own mind, looking for an answer to shut off your thoughts.
Humanity is absolutely obsessed with self-knowledge. We want to know who we are, what our mission is, where we’ll be in the next ten years, and so on.
Our inquisitorial nature has been with us for thousands of millennia, and it will continue to be for a long time.
While I think this is good in many ways, I believe that it often distracts us from genuinely stopping and looking for the beauty in all the chaos and uncertainty.
By doing this, you’d tend to focus on more of the negatives than the positives and spend days, weeks, maybe months trying to figure out what people meant by their actions, behavior, or intentions.
You’d get all kinds of anxious because she doesn’t want you, or why that pesky HR officer hasn’t gotten back to you. This is the point where anxiety, compulsive thoughts, and stress come in.
Our minds constantly crave order and safety, so I understand this anxiety. Heck, I find myself getting anxious because of this every day.
But we don’t have to accept it. We don’t have to follow the road people set for us to ensure safety, nor do we need to have a set of directions.
Rather than obsess over what we haven’t done and what we could have done better, or even where we’re going to be in the next five, ten years from now, let’s try to stop and appreciate life for what it is.
Life is about broadening your experiences as much as possible — actually getting to experience all life’s hurdles and triumphs rather than obsessively strategizing to avoid the uncertain.
There’s no rush. We’re not going anywhere. I mean, we literally have our lives ahead of us. No one would assess the societal expectations of your life, so why not start living for you?
Why not take it slow and figure out what you really want rather than being under pressure, trying to cling to social norms to please the people around us?
The next time you find yourself drowned in hours upon hours of work, try to stop and take a look around you. Focus on the environment around you, and you will appreciate life differently each time you do it. Now, imagine what it’ll feel like living life with these little moments of self-reflection and discovery.
Focus on forming unbreakable bonds with the people around you, rather than trying to stomach everything and go it alone. The friends you make now would last forever, so try as much as possible to reconnect with people you’ve stopped talking to as well.
So, to my fellow 20-year-olds, stop. Stop putting yourself under pressure in fear of the uncertain. Stop giving yourself panic attacks because of uncertainty. It’s okay to walk directionless for a while while you take care of yourself because there is no last call.
