HAVE FUN NOT KNOWING 

Welcoming uncertainty

Know, know, know.  We are eager to know what’s next, where we are going, what’s going to happen and how it’s all going to work out.  In fact we are so eager to know what will happen and to get to it already, that we don’t live in what is happening now.  The focus on the future, what it will bring or not bring, captivates our attention, consumes our thoughts and takes us right out of the present moment.  

We often don’t perceive much fun in not knowing.  In fact not knowing feels downright scary to most people as their sense of security, safety, validation and purpose is wrapped up in them knowing.  If you take a step back, a pretty far step back, and expand your perspective, you will see that everything is truly a mystery.  You’ve created routines, habits and schedules that make life look the same from day to day and give the appearance of knowing what is going to happen, but truly you don’t know.  If you stayed viewing from this larger perspective you would most likely start to notice feeling a sense of uncertainty and fear.  Due to this fear of uncertainty (which we mostly don’t let ourselves feel or even register that we feel) we do our best to create certainty.  Certainty in our relationships, our careers, the place we live, our families, our finances, our community, etc.  This artificially contrived sense of certainty gives us illusionary comfort in feeling that we will be ok because we know.  

So we must ask ourselves the question, how can not knowing be fun?  How can we change our relationship with uncertainty to one that feels good rather than one that feels bad?  If we don’t change our relationship with uncertainty than we will attempt to avoid it all costs because we perceive that it feels bad, and by nature we avoid things that don’t feel good.  However attempting to avoid uncertainty is also attempting to avoid the present since the present moment only reveals itself in the moment and not a single second before.  Trying to create certainty leads to a life that goes by and you don’t even know what really happened or if you even lived it.  You were so busy trying to get somewhere, figure out where you where headed and how to get there that you missed out on your life now.  Your life doesn’t happen in the future it happens now, this is it.   

LOVING WHAT IS 

Coming alive

One of the best ways to make not knowing fun and change your relationship with uncertainty is to love what is now.  To be a full fuck yes to what is here and committed to being here even if you don’t like what is here.  If you are busy living in fantasy land of what might happen, hasn’t happened yet or didn’t happen, you are screwed.  There really isn’t a more eloquent way to say it.  You are living in a made up world of “things will be better when…”, when I know my purpose, when I get a different job, when I have the relationship, partner or family I desire, when I find the perfect home, when I land my next gig or client, when I have this amount of money, when I find my next place to live, when I go on vacation, and on and on and on.  

To love what is stops you in your tracks.  It forces you to be present.  It forces your heart open.  It forces you to wake up and recognize what is here, what is already perfect, where you already are.  It does so really without any force at all, but will the power of love and loving.  When you choose to love what is rather than be somewhere other than you are (which is impossible by the way) you live for the first time.  To love is to live, to be alive.  Love requires that you let all resentments, hatreds, wrongness, failures, mistakes, imperfection, and the like go.  All of those perspectives keep you out of loving and therefore out of the present moment.  

Loving gives.  It gives to life.  It is what makes life come alive and be fun to live.  We all know this.  When uncertainty arises and you feel that sense of not knowing, and you recognize the pressure, stress or anxiety that are the side effects of your resistance to uncertainty, simply pause.  Take a breath.  Notice the feelings of stress, pressure, fear, and perhaps even doom and distress.  Notice that you are trying really hard to fight the feeling of not knowing, which comes with some threats to your sense of self, safety and purpose.  Simply allow.  Allow not knowing.  Open into the curiosity and even eventual playfulness that can arise from the mystery of what is to be revealed.  Don’t try to plan or figure out the reveal, when you will know, when you will get “there” wherever there is.  Just be here in the mystery of it.  Open into the mystery.  Invite it.  Welcome it.  Do not push it away or try to get through it.  Just be inside of it as if there is nothing to figure out and nowhere to go.  You already are where you are meant to be/go.  You already are doing what you are meant to be doing.  Will it change?  Yes it will always change.  

Trying to get (somewhere or something) contracts, tightens, constricts, and closes you off to all communication and information, whereas loving gives and allows for free exchange of energy, movement and information.  The paradox is that inside the mystery all is revealed, all is known.  Each moment fully informed, fully wise, fully self-aware.  That is the gift of presence, of the mystery, of the moment.  You can’t know from trying to know, but only from allowing the not known to be as it is.  In this way you create the space and container for all to be revealed to you inside the playful dance of creation.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado