I like the idea of welcoming and accepting uncertainty.

God, I really do!

I also like the idea of being an extremely good guitarist, it’s just that I don’t want to practice for years and years to get to that level.

Life IS uncertain, always and forever.

Weaving all these neat narrative webs around it that make stuff look linear and chronological and black and white and predictable, is just a comforting human trick.

You know that, and I most certainly know that.

So life IS uncertain.

Stuff happens all the time.

Stuff we call good, and stuff we call bad.

Disasters are waiting around the corner, just like death, and loss in general.

And happiness is fleeting, evasive, and unreliable.

Gone before we know it.

Just like us.

Being really good at uncertainty is an admirable and also sensible trait.

Welcoming it is even better.

‘I just LOVE me some uncertainty!’

Getting up in the morning, opening the curtains, and saying ‘YES, I’m ready to get fucked with, bring it on, baby!!’ and really meaning it, would be like fully, utterly mastering a guitar.

Probably better.

So if life IS uncertain and ever-changing and that might be the only universal truth, why not just acknowledge it, put on a big wobbly smile, and get on with it?

Well, probably because we don’t like it.

Probably because we’ve learned to get conveniently lost in the narrative, the continuity, or the logic, and pretend we’ll be here forever.

Probably because being human works better if we can negate the utter lack of control and influence we actually have.

It scares the living shit out of us.

So we’d rather forget, as long as we can.

We gloss it over and deny it collectively, at least most of us.

And it works well.

It serves us well.

Until we somehow have to turn the corner.

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(Photo by @bmann, for Unsplash)