This Is How To Embrace Uncertainty

“I have a question.”

I have stated this fact at least once a day for two weeks. It is usually met with an expected reply, like “Ask.” or “Yes?” or “I might have an answer.”

But I have no words to ask.

I have a question. I have a question, the same way I’d have a belly ache or a pulled muscle. I feel a question pressing on my ribcage. It almost feels like nausea. When I notice it, I acknowledge it the way I acknowledge grief: “ah, there it is. there is the question. it hurts and then it passes.”

I think that I’m describing confusion. Or discomfort.

The physical feeling that ‘not knowing’ creates in the body.

Have you ever felt this way?

Perhaps somebody kissed you on the lips as if to say, “I love you” then ignored you for three days. Or a loved one passed and you forgot everything you knew about death. Maybe the universe was calling you to move somewhere you couldn’t imagine living. And a question planted itself right in the center of you, but you couldn’t find any words attached to it.

This is how I have been treating my question:

With kindness. Warm baths, belly rubs, and cups of tea. I have given it a comfortable space. Maybe it needs to understand me the same way I need to understand it.

Reading it poems (and writing it poems.) The words of others are laced with empathy. When I read them, I find the emotions that I am connecting with right now. I write my own words for what I am feeling. There are answers in that.

Finding my purpose again. If I’m feeling confused or disconnected or unresolved, it is usually because I need an alignment. It means that I’ve forgotten my path or waiting for somebody else to give me an answer.

As I write this, I feel a weight lifting from my body. I realize that it isn’t necessary to carry uncertainty like a heavy brick. When somebody loves me, they will make it clear. Death has been serving its same purpose for all of time without our understanding of it. When an opportunity arrives or something speaks to my spirit, I must go.

It is okay to feel a question, confusion, or discomfort.

They show up to throw us off of our safe course for a little while. Trust the process. Through embracing confusion, our purpose becomes intensified when we lock eyes with it again.