It's a question everyone is sure to face-to-face encounter someday: what is your biggest fear? At a lunch table almost two years ago, I found myself discussing the issue with friends around me. It was something I never had quite pondered before, so grave a subject that my thoughts never had dwelled seriously upon it. I could list a number of things that could inject fear within me, seen by a swell of goosebumps down my back. Spiders, cockroaches, premature death... they chilled me, but they somehow weren't my biggest fear. As those around me answered the prompt in relative swiftness, I sat mute, in somber rumination. Maybe I wanted to be deep, but I answered when a very special something finally clicked: "My biggest fear is...uncertainty."
It felt like the correct response at the time. I hated not knowing things, not being the omniscient narrator of the world's story line. I hated lurking in the dark shadows of ignorance, mindlessly intuiting things without definite answers. I liked concrete proof, solid preparation. I worried about so many things that I was uncertain of, about the future, about others' feelings, about potential situations and about my grades. It was during times where I didn't know when the worst ghosts of myself would materialize, when I'd become angry, curt and tense. And that was not to mention the insurmountable emotional toll my uncertainty would have on me; I'd be wound up so tight in anxiety that any disappointment would trigger the string causing me to snap.
In hindsight, my fear of uncertainty was a blanket scapegoat on my fear of other things that could stem from it--on sadness, on frustration and on the heightened stress. But I no longer fear those things either.
What I learned soon is that we need uncertainty. We need it like we need change in life, stimulation. We can't go plodding around with all of our actions planned to a point. There is beauty in adaptability.
Point two, something that amazes me even more, is that uncertainty heightens all of our senses and simply makes life so much more colorful. When you're not sure of everything around you, you become so much more alert, and even the slowest of paces can seem a million miles per hour. It keeps you on edge. And this connects back to point one--given our heightened senses, our emotions become ever-changing, rising up and down in tidal waves. Some may reel at the thought, but what defines humanity from savagery is our ability to feel. The tumultuous nature is the reason we don't become bored of living and deteriorate into simply existing. It excites us--and we need it to feel sane, to create memories marked by emotion that carry depth and meaning.
I no longer fear uncertainty. In fact, I fear losing it.
Of course, we can't be uncertain all the time and live recklessly...there must be a balance, but in so many people, like myself, I've found the balance skewed. As John F. Kennedy once famously stated, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In a way, the fear of uncertainty is a fear of fear, and in that respect, Kennedy is absolutely correct. If we let go of all our excessive, incessant worries about things we don't know and can't change, we could do so much more. We could be so much happier. We could liberate ourselves from, well, ourselves.
Uncertainty is an inevitable player in life, and though it may not always play fair, we need to accept it, accept that we will experience both highs and lows in all aspects. It's kind of exciting, being only sure of the fact that nothing is set in stone, is it? In healthy doses, uncertainty encourages us to be the best version of ourselves, to not drive ourselves into being the worst. And instead of worrying and trying to hypothesize various unknowns, cherish the present moment. Absorb in every detail. And feel the current of emotions so strong and life-changing that you'll remember them forever.
