You and I Are Too Old To Be Terrified of Uncertainty

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Jas Min on Unsplash

On living life between the trapezes and loving it

Mafia Island is a lovely, isolated spot off the coast of Tanzania. That’s where I was scuba diving at an eco-friendly resort in March 2020, right about the time that IQs collectively plummeted in the United States in response to Covid.

By the time I landed back home in Denver, there was no toilet paper, nor paper towels, nor Kleenex, in a 200-mile radius. WTF people? Costco stores had to set limits on how many 30-roll packages people could load up on.

People got arrested for smuggling toilet paper.

If there wasn’t a better statement about how full of sh*t we all are (myself included), I’m not sure what is.

Covid forced us to live in uncertainty in a way few things had before at a time when economic wealth for many made us terribly complacent. It rattled peoples’ sense of security, ripped many lives away, and the political stupidity around vaccines- and I do NOT care what you think about them- made things far worse.

In so many ways, Covid forced us to deal with the fact that we always live in some level of uncertainty and insecurity.

Insecurity - and in this regard kindly, I am not going to include food insecurity or other topics, this isn’t that article - is a fine thing. It really is.

Author Maggie Jackson was recently interviewed at Vox on this topic. Here’s a ripe quote from that article which gets to the beating heart of what I want to address here:

As human beings, we dislike uncertainty for a real reason. We need and want answers. And this unsettling feeling we have is our innate way of signaling that we’re not in the routine anymore. And so it’s really important to understand, in some ways, how rare and wonderful uncertainty is.

At the same time, we also need routine and familiarity. Most of life is what scientists call predictive processing. That is, we’re constantly making assumptions and predicting. You just don’t think that your driveway is going to be in a different place when you get home tonight. You can expect that you know how to tie your shoelaces when you get up in the morning. We’re enmeshed in this incredible world of our assumptions. It’s so human, and so natural, to stick to routine and to have that comfort. If everything was always new, if we had to keep learning everything again, we’d be in real trouble.

But neuroscientists are beginning to unpack what happens in the brain when we deal with the stress of uncertainty. The uncertainty of the moment, the realization that you don’t know, that you’ve reached the limits of your knowledge, instigate a number of neural changes. Your focus broadens, and your brain becomes more receptive to new data, and your working memory is bolstered. Which is why facing uncertainty is a kind of wakefulness. In fact, Joseph Kable of the University of Pennsylvania said to me, “That’s the moment when your brain is telling itself there’s something to be learned here.” (author bolded)

“That’s the moment when your brain is telling itself there’s something to be learned here.”- Joseph Kable, University of PA

There is great promise, as well as great risk, in great uncertainty. At the same time, we are faced constantly with tiny uncertainties all day long. It’s part of life, part of learning. This choice or that choice, the tiny decisions that we don’t think much about but they are constantly teaching us the skill around not knowing.

As we age, if we work at it, we can get a whole lot better at living in uncertainty. Even to the point of living in it quite well.

Ain’t that a life lesson?

Faith, and the resilience which results from testing it, only comes with our willingness to risk an uncertain outcome.

To not know. To trust.

Not in a savior, which is a human construct. But in our ability to deal, no matter what, which is the human opportunity.

To which, as Rabindranath Tagore wrote so beautifully,

Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.

Living in uncertain times IS life. Life is always uncertain. That we demand of life to be predictable isn’t just ludicrous. It’s insane.

Photo by Zahra Amiri on Unsplash

Many of my readers are in middle age, that often sludgy, sloppy, wobbly but ultimately life-defining and unbelievably robust part of life. That’s one of those amazing times when we get to reconsider, redirect and re-define ourselves. Middle age is the perfect analogy to make a few points.

I’m going to draw from William Bridges’ overly simplistic but helpful model about managing our way through life transitions. I’m an accredited trainer with this material and find it really useful.

For context:

Change often happens TO us. We have no say about many changes, be they midlife, menopause, an earthquake, loss of a spouse. Shit happens. If we initiated a major change, like divorce or a move, we might feel uber-energized, but the change still creates a tsunami of upheaval, unanticipated pain and loss.

Transitions are how we move through those changes; the emotional, spiritual and physical experiences brought on by a change. We do have control over this aspect of life’s shifts.

In the difference is the development of genuine personal power.

You and I are WAY Too Old to operate like perpetual victims of life’s vicissitudes.

Of course shit happens. Of course we all experience some of life’s worst.

Some more than others. However, moving through them, as opposed to weaponizing our traumas to justify immobility and depression, is the work of the sacred.

Having been traumatized aplenty via incest, rapes and plenty more, I am no stranger to life’s deep hurts.

However, while those experiences in their own way define me just as they do each of us, they do not determine us.

It is part of sacred work to deal head-on with such hurts. The true sacred work is to use those experiences as stepping stones. The grief we feel for childhood pain becomes empathy for others. The legacy of hurtful parents becomes compassion for those struggling with the same.

Sexual violence allows us to create a space of grace for the billions of others who are harmed, and not blame the victim.

When our trust is broken, that’s traumatizing. That can make the world a far more scary place. However, the road forward isn’t waiting for a savior or some sweet person to kiss our booboos and make it all better.

It’s embracing the entirety of the experience, letting it change us as necessary, and strengthen us for the next. For more is coming. Part of how we cope is creating community, for isolation is no answer.

Bridges’ book is a lovely jaunt through how to best manage our way through transitions. Two parts are particularly relevant here.

First:

We rarely if ever take time to mourn our losses.

The ink isn’t dry on the divorce papers before someone has a great guy for us to meet.

The soil on the coffin of our deceased is hardly dry before someone has a party for us to attend.

WILL YOU PLEASE JUST STOP.

Part of this is others’ terrible discomfort with our pain.

Part of this is cultural. We have few true broadly-shared rituals in the USA. Even something as simple as a quinceañera in Spanish culture acknowledges a coming-of-age.

Of course, people get blind stinking drunk when they reach 21, which I suppose is part of a passage- to hell maybe, or to jail. But other life passages, we often would prefer not to acknowledge at all. Like birthdays, which are noted, but not without deep discomfort.

Perhaps one of the biggest messages out of all of Bridges’ fine work is this: when something ends, we in Western society often deny, delay, renegotiate, avoid, do every single thing possible to push back the inevitable.

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

In other words, we get solidly stuck in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s first two stages: denial and anger.

With any change comes an ending. Most likely those endings entail losses.

Bridges teaches that the best way to move through a transition is to just STOP. Then we address the endings before we rush headlong into a new beginning for which we are woefully unprepared.

Ask:

-What ended for you?

-What did you lose as a result of that ending?

-What do you need to do in order to acknowledge, allow and release what has ended? How can you honor what ended, so that the pain doesn’t attach itself to your future?

-How can you memorialize, or otherwise ritualize this ending/loss, so that you can mark it emotionally, and begin letting go?

At midlife, you and I face many endings. They may include a full house, menses, a marriage, healthy parents, a job, those slim thighs (if ever you and I had them, I didn’t), a job, our identities as sexy and fruitful as we evolve out of reproductive age, a smooth face, I could go on.

Most of us feel those losses deeply.

Along with this, as we march steadily towards fifty or thereabouts, our quicksilver brains have been slowing down since our late teens. Now we REALLY notice it.

Men experience much the same, barring the menses part, although I’m quite sure they’re just as happy to see those leave as well.

The act of writing down one ending, and then listing the losses can be cathartic. Often we don’t even realize what we’ve lost until we push the tip of our tongue against the painful tooth we’ve been ignoring.

Here’s one example.

I just spoke to someone who moved to New Mexico to be closer to her family in Texas and Louisiana. While the move was mostly positive, here’s what she gave up:

-Decades of familiar routines, places and friends

-Access to her favorite rivers and hiking spots

-The Oregon Coast

-Her identity as an Oregonian

And so much more.

Each of those losses, once named, is likely to bring up a great well of emotion. That’s precisely why we bury it, avoid it, push through and try to leave it behind.

Writing it all down names it. Calls it out into the light, where we can look at the points of pain and pleasure in detail. Accept that there are layers of subtle pain we’ve denied, and invite those points of pain to be seen. Felt.

We are not trained to deal with the fullness of our emotions. We’re trained, and my hand is way up here, to punch our powerful emotions down deep inside so that others aren’t made uncomfortable.

When we don’t list our losses and embrace with what comes with them, they attach themselves to us as dead weight.

Facing your losses and the pain they bring up makes you fearless, as much as anyone can be. It’s not about having no fear, it’s having less of it; so much so that you can be nervous as hell and do it anyway.

If you and I want the wherewithal to deal with uncertainty, which is life’s great given, we need to learn how to deal with what we’ve long avoided. Resilience, courage, patience, emotional strength, emotional maturity are among the great gifts of taking the time to list our losses and release them from our lives.

Second, once we have truly dealt with a major loss, we enter what Bridges calls The Neutral Zone.

We try to move way too fast through that crucial, chaotic middle period where all the creativity and opportunity lie.

That is the heart and soul of transition, learning to be in the muddy middle for a while.

Too many people during Covid were trying to bum rush starting all over again, not only having never dealt with the terrible cost of that pandemic but being in a huge hurry to return to a “normalcy” that was never available in the first place.

This is what we do. The place in the middle between having handled our losses and moving towards some New Beginning is this no-man’s land of utter uncertainty. You and I are hung between the trapezes, having let go, and then having to wait interminably for another trapeze to slap our outstretched hand.

It may not appear for years.

I read and hear people say all the time, with great gravitas, that the only constant in life is change.

Yeah? Howzat going for you, by the way? It’s true, but how are we handling it?

Most of us are lousy at it, because:

Change=loss=pain=avoidance=fear=run in the other direction at speed, or hide.

It’s why so many relationships fail because, baggage.

It’s why so many of us fail at the next job because, baggage.

It’s why…yeah, well.

There are always New Beginnings, as Bridges describes. But they aren’t available, not in full, to those of us who don’t or can’t handle our shit. Who don’t face into the deep and powerful emotions brought on by what life’s changes wreak.

New Beginnings can’t take root if we are deeply rooted in our past traumas. No matter how many new guys, new cities, new sports, new girls, new whatevers we take on, they will topple if we try to make them work on a wobbly foundation of unexpressed grief.

Insecurity, inconsistency, constant change, uncertainty.

Part of life. One of our greatest teachers. Sadly it’s one reason that those who can’t or refuse to learn to cope run headlong towards radical religion, politics and conspiracy theories. There’s implied solace, but no strength.

The older we get, the more practice we have with change, coping, loss, recovery, starting over. If we’re wise, we look into the abyss and don’t mind if it looks back.

Most of us need help, which is why I noted earlier that building community is such an essential part of this journey. We need friends, family, therapists, ways to figure out what our unique, particular process looks like.

Rabindranath Tagore, public domain, 1941

To that, I’ll return to Tagore. Here’s the entire quote:

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling
Your mercy in my success alone; but let me find
the grasp of Your hand in my failure.

Tagore was addressing his God. This poem speaks to me to the very heart of faith, which is faith in our ability to love life no matter what.

Back in 1983, when I got my first Daytimer, I typed up this poem and put in on the front page so that I could see it every day. It’s still there.

I do my level best, and I fail regularly, to live this way. When I do, the rewards are unfathomable.

Uncertainty teaches us faith.

Faith gives us strength, and strength sees us through.

Faith lets us play, no matter what.

Let’s play.

Photo by Julia Caesar on Unsplash

Thank you for hanging out with me today and taking a walk through a challenging topic. If this served you and fed your soul, please consider

Also, since these articles pay the bills (okay, they pay for a bag of groceries so far) if you have the wherewithal to throw pennies on my deck, please again consider

If someone you know is struggling and is having a tough time moving through past traumas, this article might inspire them to find help, find a way forward. It might not. But if you think it would help, please consider

Either way, embrace life’s uncertainties, and when it rains, go out and dance in it anyway!