Embracing uncertainty

“We live in this time of radical uncertainty,” says Joanna Macy—our world right now and its meta-crises, degradation of nature, stress and loss.

It is easy to create a list of things that may suddenly, negatively shift. It can be quite counterintuitive to hold uncertainty as a gift.

Seeing the gifts of uncertainty calls in a psychological and cultural shift. It helps us hold answers, undertake action and accept what is around us. From this, new systems and ways-of-being can emerge. 

The five gifts of uncertainty Joanna lists are: 

1. We get the present moment> 
2. We get a fresh recognition of the power of intention> 
3. We get the befriending of our pain and the great mystery that it brings us. Courage> 
4. We get solidarity> Support in all our relationships. 
5. We get an immensity of time> Our true age. 

Present moment

Being hopeful or feeling hopeless may seem somewhat at odds with each other. However, you-I-we can drop the need to be hopeful or hopeless when we recognize that these are just feelings:

They might have more to do with what you had for breakfast or what somebody said to you in the last phone call.

This is a little paradoxical. Hopeful or hopeless is a perspective. Hope is both true and a partial truth. Yet, in that lack of clarity:

Uncertainty can free us from the need to be constantly taking our emotional temperature as to how optimistic or pessimistic we are in the moment.

…
Do you tap Goliath’s David on the shoulders as he’s going out to fight? Wait a minute are you hopeful? Let’s get it out of the way. I got something to do. And, in that, just that, that game of hopeful and hopeless is conjectural. It takes you out of the immediacy of the moment which is where you are moving and where your strength is and your alertness. 

In our modern world, we tend to think of things as true or untrue. Not both. Around something like hope and hopelessness it is easier to feel it can be both-and, both true and untrue. We often feel both in quick succession. Which was true? Both! And neither!

Consequently, being exposed to both hope and hopelessness, many of our experiences in our world today, is a gift revealing other gifts of uncertainty.

Power of intention

Only in the present moment can you see what you’re seeing. Only in the present moment can you feel what you’re feeling. Only in the present moment can you take that step.

We author our present and past right now, in the moment. We do this when we bring our attention to a perspective or circumstance. Of course, we are influenced by everything around us, history and more. Yet:

Only in the present moment can we choose just what we’re going to do. … This capacity to choose is what is seen as the actual essence or nature of a self. We are in our truest being, a verb. And the verb is what we’re choosing to do. 

We are socialized for outcomes—viewing ourselves as a verb is a little unusual. We privilege measurable metrics and this tends to be physical production and possessions while, paradoxically, our passion is the motivator.

Joanna:

I used to think that it was more importance of what the results were that I achieved, in whatever I was bent on doing, and my motivation I took for granted. Oh well, it’s always there you know. I can count on myself to care for heaven’s sakes. But then I realized that if I lose that motivation, lose that caring, I’ve nothing on which to intent. I’m at sea. I can see why the Buddhist teachers put such great prize on bodhichitta, that motivation for the welfare of all.

A shift from an outcome focus to prioritizing motivation is radical. It mirrors the changes going on around us such as workplaces that increasingly care for social and psychological wellbeing. Making a profit won’t work if no one is willing to be employed.

Is it led by individual or society needs? Or the great pressures of our world’s uncertain conditions? Probably all of these so:

don’t take it [motivation] for granted. Cherish it. Blow on that little ember. Make it into a flame. As Jesus said … ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt loses it savour where with will it be salted? That’s what intention is like. intention, your motivation… don’t take that for granted. Bless it, that itch, that needing… 

Courage

The courage to feel what you fear in the present moment is you become present to your world. Then you feel what you’re carrying that usually if you’re being rushed and hurried out of your minds, you don’t bother paying attention to.

That’s definitely paradoxical. Why would we welcome feeling fear, loss or hopelessness?

You try to pave it over. Block it down. Shut it down. Turn away, turn it off. But, try as we might, it comes up again. The grief, the rage, the raw fear. What in god’s name are we doing to our world and to each other? 

This is a call, in part, to befriend our pain. How would it be if we treat this as a welcome part of us? A piece that opens us to greater emotional depths and the wonder associated with this.

Yes, that can be and is intense. Letting pain and grief in is an enabler too. Our world and relationships are full of inconsistencies and contradictions. A reflection of this within us is welcoming what could be seen as mutually incompatible things such as welcoming fear and insights into great mysteries that brings us.

On this, Joanna says:

It is a measure of your evolution. It is a measure of your humanity. it is a measure of your nobility because you have a heart-mind big enough to see and empathize with the outrage being inflicted on our world in all our relations.

Breathing space

Breath
Rainer Maria Rilke on the gifts of uncertainty:

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.*

On this Joanna says “I am seeing… as the poet saw that is the meaning of your the pain. We feel for the suffering in our world and it means that we are inextricably livingly connected.”

Solidarity

We matter a lot more than we think and our relationships matter a lot more than we think too.** Our interconnection with all things is our life support system and those entanglements run deep.

Joanna explains this as solidarity, cooking! and systems theory:

Solidarity with the life forms… from dolphin to prairie dog and we are waking up.

One measure is Blessed Unrest:

Paul Hawken says this is the largest social movement in history. It is bringing in all life forms.

In other words the whole system:

That’s one of the things I love about systems theory. It helps us see. But, any good cook can see this when you make a stew or a soup, the synergies, the emergent properties that come. That is my substitute for hope and it’s a lot better because with every step you take something new happens. With every relationship, with every person you trust, with every person you come clear to, something happens.

Immensity of time

Our times are unique. We know more about our past and futures than ever before. Our knowledge not only spans millennia, in both directions, for our world but the cosmos as well—out to origins and endings.

That awareness can be hard. Joanna reaches into it:

We live in a time when our Karma that is, the consequences of our actions, thanks to science and industrial capitalism, extends into geological time, reaches across hundreds of thousands of generations.

This connects with pain and loss:

The decisions we make right now, in a multitude of activities, will have a direct effect on whether future generations, centuries and centuries, millennia from now, will be able to be born sound of mind and body. 

And there’s a gift here too. It brings our-your-my, human, experiences and felt connections with each other and other species closer. Awareness of consequences or suffering alongside the vitality and aliveness of being engaged. We become more aware of our power to matter—we matter much more than we think—and act for positive shifts.

Joanna:

You better believe that… the future ones are therefore in our actions right here, now. Feathered ones and scaled ones and so are the ancestors by the same token. I want you to feel them present. Along with the brothers and sisters of all species and forms of beauty and strength.

Her call resonates for me and I hope for you:

You can let them be yours, yeah you deserve that. Because they’re on your side you see. To be a human now, in this darkness of uncertainty. They’re all plugging for us. Please feel them, the ancestors and the future beings. Let them laugh in your ear, as well as slap you on the backside and pull you forward. Because we have great work to do.