I have always had a paradoxical relationship with the unknown. My favorite movies are the ones with the best twists, the unexpected plot developments that seem to come out of nowhere but were actually hinted at all along. From these movies I learned how exciting it is to be taken along on a journey that unfolds in front of me, unaware of what is to come. My favorite way to walk into a movie theater is to know nothing about the film I’m about to experience, to not even have seen a trailer, because I want to have the full experience of the journey. Having a movie spoiled feels like a deep betrayal, like I have been robbed of something true and pure, like having a part of my life stolen. And yet, I am rarely as proud of myself as when I figure out the twist before it is revealed. I love not knowing, but I really want to know… or perhaps I really just want to figure it out for myself.
In many ways this relationship I have with plot twists in movies mirrors the relationship I have with life itself. To the age old question, would you want to know when you are going to die, I say, absolutely not. I would hate it if someone told me anything about my future. The notion that the outcomes of my life can be known is deeply disturbing to me. I believe in the great mystery. I am skeptical of the desire to know one’s future, or claims that we can know what happens when we die. I embrace the unknowability of life’s greatest questions. And yet, I have spent a lot of my life trying not only to figure out the twists before they are revealed, but to write them myself.
I spent the decade of my twenties on the visionary’s track. I was obsessed with creation, with bringing forth into the world visions that lived first in my mind. I wrote five year plans and ten year plans. I knew the life I wanted to live and I worked tirelessly in an effort to make it so. My confrontations with death, with the great unknown, with the reality of how little control we have over the big questions did nothing to deter me from trying to map out and exert control over all of the little things, all of the things that seemed like they could be known.
When the power of my will was exhausted, when I reached the limit of my capacity to make things so simply by the force of my desire and determination, I fell down. It was a hard fall, a long fall. It took many years before I could get back up. It was not a pleasant time but it gave me a chance to rebuild my relationship with the unknown.
I remember, early on in this years-long fall, looking around and having what felt like the strangest thought: I am not anywhere that I want to be. None of the aspects of my life are what I envisioned or what I wanted. I am not happy with where I am. But… I stand by every choice I made that got me here. It was the kind of thought that struck me at the time as being important, but I don’t think I could have known then just how central that thought, that realization would be for the way I would rebuild and continue living my life from that moment forward.
The idea that I was not in control of the outcomes in my life was not new to me. I have long known that the circumstances of our lives are not ours to control. But this was a slightly different lesson. This was not about the circumstances I was born into, or the conditions of the world around me. This was not even about the fleeting and unknowable nature of life and death. This was about actions and choices. This was about accepting the actions I had taken in my life regardless of their outcome, this was about celebrating myself for making choices that felt right despite the fact that those choices did not lead me to the place I imagined they would. Eventually this thought would return to teach me that holding on to a vision too tightly can turn that vision into a trap, into a debt.
Today, as I continue my lifelong project of embracing the unknown, I am seeking out the joy in knowing that I don’t know what’s around the next bend, I am working to embrace my own smallness and not be afraid of it, and I am most excited about the space I am leaving open in my life for that which might emerge.