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I am at the point in my life where my peers and I are often going in different directions. Friends from college are all over the place–one friend lives in the woods of Alaska, others are getting into med school, others are climbing the corporate ladder, one friend is woodworking in his Vermont hometown. As I chat with friends, and navigate my own path, there is often a sense that someone else has the clear answer and knows where they are headed. We put the sense of authority onto a parent, then find out they don’t know entirely what they’re doing, so we transfer that command to another authority figure, then climb high enough to find out they also don’t have complete sense of certainty.
Certainty seems to exist out there, a just out of reach. Certainty about relationships, jobs, school, family, or anything else really. Some people search for certainty in other people in the form of validation, some people (myself included) look for certainty in the form of advice, information, and research. Neither of these are bad things to do, but they are not going to give you the absolute certainty you are looking for.
I live with my parents right now, They are in their mid to late fifties and navigating their own changes in life. My father was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and is navigating a path riddled with uncertainty and open endedness. There is no hiding from the uncertainty for him. That doesn’t mean that there are not big goals to set, trips to plan, or ambitions to take on in the next season. But it does mean that he is adapting the standards with which he holds himself to. A few weeks ago I was going nordic skiing with him, we were running late as the sun was warming up the crisp corduroy. I was rushing us out the door, pouring his coffee into a to-go mug and trying to hurry him along. We got in the car and he turned to me and said, “I can’t do that anymore, rush around like that, it makes everything worse”.
My father was not always the most patient person, he packed a lot into the days, and was no stranger to rushing out of the house with arms full of bags and equipment. Now he is forced to proceed into anything with abundant grace and patience towards himself. It does not mean things are not going to get done, it does not mean he will achieve big goals–but it does mean that they may take a little longer.
I try to do a lot and often rush through things. I try to move as efficiently and quickly as I can– often with little patience for myself or others. I often feel overwhelmed about all I am trying to do and goals I am trying to reach–which in turn makes me anxious. It is almost cruel for anyone to hold themself to standards nobody could ever reach–standards one would never demand of another. It seems that the humane approach to ambition is to let impossible standards fall to the ground, then pickup a few meaningful tasks from the rubble and move forward with those today.
Impossible standards are in conflict with the reality of uncertainty. There is no certainty, and there is something liberating about accepting that and refusing to look for it when anxiety and uncertainty rears its head. It’s alarming to face this prospect that I might never truly feel as though I know what I’m doing, in work, relationships, or anything else. But it’s liberating, too, because it removes a central reason for feeling self-conscious or inhibited about your performance in those domains. If there is never going to be a feeling of total authority, I might as well not wait any longer to give such activities it all– to put bold plans into practice, to stop erring on the side of caution.
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