Some thoughts on coping with uncertainty — morning meditation

Robin Cangie
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

What is a morning meditation? To help me build a habit of daily writing, I’m publishing a few thoughts here every morning about ideas that interest and inspire me, mostly drawn from ordinary life. I hope you enjoy them.

There are times in everyone’s life when the path suddenly curves. The way ahead, once clear and stable, veers sharply into the unknown. This is part of what it means to have a human life, a human body, a human mind.

We know this, yet still these sudden curves surprise us. No one wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Today is the day I shall be jostled out of my illusions of certainty. Today is the day life will remind me that no one ever really knows what’s going to happen next.”

Life would be so much easier if it worked that way. It would be so much less unpredictable, less gut-wrenching, less terrifying, less heartbreaking. But it would also be less vibrant, less astonishing, less bewitching, less awe-inspiring. Life would be altogether less filled with wonder.

Yes, wonder. I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between uncertainty and wonder, and I’ve come to believe they are sisters. The thrill of wonder, the agony of uncertainty — they are bound to each other as the tides are bound to the ocean.

So try this the next time uncertainty threatens to upend your world: allow it to ignite your sense of wonder.

Allow yourself to feel how fascinating it is to be alive and experiencing these things, even (especially) the unpleasant things, the hard, agonizing things we all encounter at some point on this journey. Imagine how many millions or billions of people have also faced these things, how many are facing them right now. And wonder at that, at the strangeness and beauty and fragility and resilience of this humanness we share!

At the very least, you will know you aren’t alone. You will know you aren’t even unusual. In this one way, in this one moment, you are just like every person who has ever lived.

And this makes it easier somehow.

Robin Cangie

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