“If I could just find someone who cared about me, I would be happy.” Looking back, it seems I lived much of my life as if I believed that idea were true. I also seemed to believe that if I cared about someone else, they would care about me, and so by some strange logic I was attracted to women who needed very badly to be cared about. Unfortunately, it turned out that such women could never be truly convinced that I cared, or that I would continue to care, and in their insecurity they were never able to care about me. My strategy for finding happiness was not very effective.
No matter how tangled our relationships and our ideas about them can be, there has been an evolutionary advantage in seeking out relationships with our fellow creatures—species that do leave more offspring. We have this impulse in common with all social organisms, from ants to antelopes.
The evolutionary advantage is real, and the emotions that have evolved to propel relationship-seeking are real, but we human beings have also evolved language, which we can use to think about and understand our predicament in ways that other social animals cannot. We can imagine a future in which our needs are met, or not, and our real troubles begin in this imagined future.
Our ability to imagine the future means that we can anticipate our needs and make arrangements to satisfy them—this is good. It also means that we can imagine the failure of our plans, and it is the imagined possibility of failure that begets the search for security.
If we can find some kind of short-term security, we are lucky. There’s a roof over our head, food in the fridge, and no one is trying to break down the door to get in. But life on this planet is uncertain: the person we hoped would cherish us forever could be smitten by someone else; a fire could burn down our happy home; and ultimately, death awaits each of us.
The inherent uncertainty of life can lead to a great deal of anxiety and unhappiness, but it doesn’t have to. Oddly enough, with all the unpredictable possibilities stretching out before us—and the impossibility of preparing for even a fraction of them—there is one thing of which we can be absolutely certain, and that is uncertainty itself.
I chuckled when I finished that last sentence, struck by the humor of our situation: blessed with the ability to imagine the future, we are cursed with the uncertainty of our imaginings. Our imagination fuels our anxiety, and the only reasonable respite from this anxiety is to become comfortable with uncertainty.
Uncertainty is, after all, our constant companion, so we might as well befriend it. None of us can predict what kind of thought or memory our brain will bring to consciousness in the next moment, let alone next week. I am constantly amused by the parade of memories that my brain produces without any obvious stimulus, with no apparent purpose. “Where did that come from?” my brain asks itself, and then gets on with washing the dishes after a moment of smiling wonder.
By paying attention to the moment-to-moment surprises blossoming in our heads, we can get comfortable with the idea of not knowing what’s going to happen next. Life can become a perpetual surprise party, with each of us the honored guest.
With enough practice, we can develop a very tentative attitude toward all our plans for the future, with a resulting lack of distress when they are altered by unforeseen circumstances. We may also come to find humor in our unrequited yearnings for security and certainty.
We can learn to enjoy our relationships without expecting them to save us from insecurity. We can enjoy all the pleasures the body offers without dreading their inevitable end.
Our hunger for that which does not exist can fade away.
Come On In II from Norman Bearrentine on Vimeo.
[...] The Short Version Love, Life, Meaning, Zen, and Science, by Norm Bearrentine « The Uncertainty of Life and Love [...]
[...] be scary, especially if you imagine a future in which terrible things happen. As I’ve mentioned before, imagination is both a curse and a gift, and the same is true of memory: we remember bad things, [...]