Uncertainty’s certainty

“Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears. We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment – over and over again.”~ Pema Chödrön , Comfortable with Uncertainty

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Since January 20, 2025, the US stock market has plummeted. As historian Heather Cox Richardson recently reported,

The threat of instability if Trump tries to fire [Federal Reserve chair Jerome] Powell, added to the instability already created by Trump’s tariff policies, saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average fall 971.82 points, or 2.48%; the S&P 500 dropped 2.36%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.55%. The dollar hit a three-year low, while the value of gold soared. Journalist Brian Tyler Cohen noted that since Trump took office, the Dow has fallen 13.8%, the S&P 500 is down 15.5%, and the Nasdaq is down 20.5%. (Letters from an American April 21 2025)

Journalists and financial folks say “business does not like uncertainty,” and “uncertainty is the worst thing for business.” Which kind of cracks me up. Since who does like uncertainty and what’s more, when was the last time we were certain about anything?

We might feel a sense of predictability or stability but I would argue that those are illusions. If someone had asked me early in March 2020 if I felt like things were relatively stable and predictable, I would have said yes. And then, the world shut down in a way that was completely unprecedented and chock full of uncertainty.

So, yes, business is uncomfortable with uncertainty because most people are uncomfortable with uncertainty. This is why Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön calls getting comfortable with uncertainty the warrior’s path, a spiritual path. Since who of us could stay “cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears”?

It is a practice, to be sure.

That practice is to remind ourselves that uncertainty is the way it is. Historians might point to precedent and economists might point to trends. We might chart our uncertain course by these markers but the reality is that nobody knows what or how it will unfold. We are all, to paraphrase meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg, one phone call away from our lives being completely upended.

Living in the United States right now is like getting that phone call every day.

Rebecca Solnit writes about uncertainty with reassuring wisdom:

I know we don't know exactly how and when [something more than the current protests] will happen, but I suspect it will, and I suspect it will start with something small, with a ‘one more thing/one last straw’ kind of incident. No one knows when or where.

Think about your life. Think about all the things that have happened to bring you to right now. Some of them may have been planned and expected – education, graduations, maybe the pursuit of a career — but none of them were certain.

And even if those expected things happened, are you still on the trajectory you thought you were on when you were 20 (and if you’re 20 or younger, 5 years ago)? I’d wager not. I suspect that you unexpectedly lost a job or got one. I suspect you were once surprised by the end of a relationship or the start of one. That you started something you thought would be temporary until it wasn’t, or you started something that you thought would be permanent until it wasn’t.

So humor me: assume that everything is uncertain and always has been. If that’s the case, what do we do? How do we live day to day in that kind of wobbliness?

Solnit suggests that we just keep going,

“...I don't know. Neither do you. No one does. All we can do is keep showing up, keep speaking up, keep donating, keep connecting, keep our values close and our courage strong and keep an eye out. And not give up, including not settling into this as though it's normal or permanent or we're helpless. I think I said here before that it's like we can pile up the fuel for the bonfire but it's lightning that will ignite it.”

I won’t lie: there are days when the barrage of soul-crushing atrocities and cruel arrogance of this country is more than I can take. There has been ugly crying and black moods, believe me. But most days, I do my best to keep checking in with my values and to keep showing up.

The words of teachers like Ani Pema, Heather Cox Richardson and Rebecca Solnit remind me of what I already know: uncertainty is the way of this world but that doesn’t mean we don’t have agency. As Solnit writes,

I know a lot of people these days are uncomfortable with uncertainty, but I'll take the true knowledge that is we don't know over the false knowledge that we do. No one knows the future. But we do know the past, which tells us that things happened no one anticipated, that history itself is made out of surprises that only seem obvious or inevitable in retrospect.

When in doubt or confusion with swirling, ever-present uncertainty, think of the things in your own life that now seem inevitable but were, when they were happening, unexpected, surprising and made no sense. That’s just what it’s like living here in the uncertainty of now and it can be scary and confusing...which is why we simply must keep going together.

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Sources:

Comfortable with Uncertainty by Ani Pema Chödrön

Heather Cox Richardson Letters from an American April 21, 2025

When Hope and History Rhyme by Rebecca Solnit

More Essays on Uncertainty:

Recognizing that I hardly wrote this essay but rather quoted some beloved writers/teachers, I offer two other of my essays on Uncertainty:

Anniversary

Adventures Unplanned

Hope & Fear

Hope is as hollow as fear. ~ Tao Te Ching, Verse 13 (translation by Stephen Mitchell, 1995)

For many years, I was in a small meditation group. We met once a week to sit together and to talk through Buddhist teachings. One of our favorite teachers was (and is!) Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön. Her work is so profound and deep that we would often read just a couple of pages and then talk for an hour to try to sort it out.

In her seminal book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Ani Pema writes

“If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.”

We talked about this idea for a long time: that hope and fear are two sides of a not-very-helpful coin. Fear is aversion, pushing away something we don’t want. Hope is grasping something we do. Neither state is conducive to peace. Intellectually, we all agreed with this. But “hopelessness”? That seemed like a hard place to land.

As a nod to all those conversations, one holiday season I gave those four friends little fridge magnets that said:

Abandon Hope.

They were not universally well-received. One woman’s husband upon seeing it tossed it directly into the trash.

Modern culture – particularly in advertising, marketing and politics – uses fear to push us to do or buy something. In a recent interview, former Representative Adam Kinzinger said

“...things like fear and division raises money for political campaigns. And so [the press and politicians have] abused people that way. And the media has abused people to keep them hooked. Starting with, you know, most namely Rush Limbaugh and then Fox News and then now these, Right Side Broadcasting, Newsmax all these that are competing to get people angrier and angrier.”

I know I feel this heightened anger in myself and in the people around me. And it’s not only about politics.

“No one will like you if you have bad breath! Buy this mouthwash!” “If you don’t get electrolytes, you’ll get dehydrated! Buy this sugary sports drink!” “This country is a hellscape and only I can save you! Vote for me!”

In this context, hope seems like a much better approach.

And yet, I remember when I realized that campaigns of hope were really doing the same thing as campaigns of fear only on the sunnier, less swampy side of the street.

I’m not a huge fan of organized religion, in part, because they often dangle the lure of hope in front of vulnerable folks. Your life may be full of suffering now, they say from many a pulpit, but do as we say and the afterlife will be all sunshine and rainbows in the clouds with The Man himself! Hope is the illusion of certainty that things will work out the way we want.

In a recent episode of her Gathering Room podcast, Martha Beck points out that both hope and fear reside in the future and are both rungs on a shaky ladder. She quotes the Tao Te Ching:

Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

By planting our feet in the present on the solid foundation of mindfulness and equanimity, we can let go of the shaky ladder of fear and hope.

As this intense presidential election unfolds, I keep watching my internal experience. Am I feeling the grip of fear and its attendant anger? (Um, yes, pretty much every day.) Am I feeling the surge and pull of hope? (Some days, sure.) Every time I feel myself recoil from what I’m afraid of or lean in toward what I want, I remind myself that hope and fear are two sides of the future – and that is a shaky ladder to stand on.

I do my best to let go of fear...and hope. I do my best to use mindfulness and equanimity to relax into the present where I can actually take wise, skillful action. As Pema says,

“Without giving up hope—that there's somewhere better to be, that there's someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.”

I know, I know, it’s a tall order. I get it. The question I keep asking myself is how can I stay with my feet planted in the ground of mindfulness and equanimity while recognizing the truth of the unpredictable groundlessness that is human life?

I don’t expect the “Abandon Hope” fridge magnet to ever be a big seller. I get why one went straight into the garbage. But as challenging as it is to let go of the hope of hope, I see that it’s really no better than living in the fire of fear and anger.

PeaceFall Rest

This week marked the first day of fall, the International Day of Peace and me putting both of my feet in the sand and my body in Mama Ocean.

In honor of all three of these, I offer a piece of art, a poem and a song and an invitation to your own Peace. Fall. Rest.

Our days are really just a series of up and down. Just like waves, it is happening all the time. The transition out of the boot didn’t go seamlessly. We got to boat into the sea marshes with the herons. I wasn’t able to bike. Our campground neighbors lent us their canoe for exploring the bay. Up and down. Up and down.

As Pema Chodron reminds us, “pain is not a punishment and pleasure is not a reward.” In honor of the rise and fall and up and down and pleasure and pain, here is a piece of art, a poem and a song:

Inspired by the oak leaves that started falling on our deck recently … and the new art supplies I’ve been experimenting with! (Available as a print and cards in my online shop and at Cville Arts on the downtown mall in Charlottesville.)

Trough by Judy Sorum Brown

There is a trough in waves,

A low spot

Where horizon disappears

And only sky

And water

Are our company.

And there we lose our way

Unless

We rest, knowing the wave will bring us

To its crest again.

There we may drown

If we let fear

Hold us within its grip and shake us

Side to side.

And leave us flailing, torn, disoriented.

But if we rest there

In the trough,

Are silent,

Being with

The low part of the wave,

Keeping

Our energy and

Noticing the shape of things,

The flow,

Then time alone

Will bring us to another

Place

Where we can see

Horizon, see the land again,

Regain our sense

Of where

We are,

And where we need to swim.

Rise & Fall by Craig David (feat. Sting)

In the midst of it all may you experience PeaceFall Rest today.

Clouds

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

~ Joni Mitchell

The weather is sunny and warm and even so, it is a terrible, horrible, no good, really bad day.* I'm afraid of and angry at everything.

I'm afraid and angry about the discomfort in my body. I'm sick to death of hobbling around strapped in this hot, heavy robo-boot. Soreness in my feet and ankles, painful twinges in knees and hips after nearly two months with a toaster oven velcroed to my leg, tension even my neck and shoulders -- all of it pisses me off and scares the bejeezus out of me.

I'm frightened and furious about how this injury impacts the way I move, what I can do and how I can be with people. I'm angry at everyone who can walk normally and drive themselves places and stand up in the shower.

I'm afraid and angry that this may not be over anytime soon. Afraid and angry that I don't know how this is going to go.

This is not my first fear and fury rodeo. I know what's going on, so I do all the things: move my body, go out in the sunshine, read some Pema, breathe breathe breathe. Nothing loosens the grip. Even dunking myself, temporarily bootless, in the cold river doesn't shake the dread and rage.

I know it doesn't help me to stew in pity and bitterness. I know that my practice is to embrace the inherent uncertainty of living. But knowing is one thing and feeling is another and the feeling I'm feeling is that I hate it all with all that I have.

Exhausted, I plunk myself on the planks of our front porch under the late summer sun. I think maybe I can bake it out of me, so I lay down, squeeze my eyes shut, and stew in my suffering.

I can feel the bite of the sun on my skin and the snarl of tangled barbed wire emotions around my heart. For all the world, it feels like I am stuck here.

Every single meditation teacher I've ever had says it: thoughts and emotions come and go like clouds floating through an open sky. As Ani Pema says, “You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”

I sneak one eye open - then both - and look into the huge blue sky dotted with puffy little clouds. "There's the sky with its Thought&EmotionClouds," I think. "OK. I'm ready. Let them float on through."

But the clouds don't move. They just sit there. No floating. No drifting to the horizon. No gentle coasting out of sight. Just clouds stuck and static over my miserable self, blocking the sun, as Joni sings.

I squeeze my eyes shut again. "That's just f***ing perfect," I think. "Of course they aren't moving. They are calcified to the sky, just like I'm calcified in my fear and anger.” Even the freaking sky is a reflection of my own wretched stuckness.

I open my eyes again and scowl at that stupid little stuck cloud. It sits there and sits there … and then one edge of it slowly slowly dissolves into the blue. It's not moving or drifting or floating and it is changing. I watch for one minute, then two, and it finally disappears.

I look at another fluffy little cloud that is perched over our porch and it, too, is not floating or going anywhere but very very slowly wisping away at the edges. Then right where it is ... it disappears.

After half an hour of watching the non-floaty clouds dissolve and shift, I sigh, hoist my booted self off the hot decking and go inside.

I'd love to say that once I saw that even static, unfloating clouds do change, that the storm inside me shifted and dissolved, too.

It didn't.

Not right away. It took a long sitting-on-the-floor shower. And some leftover pizza. And some loud music. And trash TV. And several long hugs. After all of that and some sleep, my own non-drifting Thought&EmotionClouds, softened and let go.

You are the sky. Everything else is just weather. Even when all you can see is a solid bank of clouds. Even when the clouds don't move as fast as you'd like or at all. Even when it looks like everything is cemented in place, it isn't.

Even when the weather moves infuriatingly slowly, still we are the sky.

* I've actually never read the famous book by Judith Viorst, but the title sure does sum things right up.

Wilder-ness

The Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park is perched on the edge of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The park is home to waterfalls, high lakes, virgin forest, wild turkeys … and spotted knapweed. The fragile ecosystem is being overrun by a deceptively pretty flower.

On our trip to the Porkies in July, we met up with park naturalist, Katie Urban and a team of local environmentalists to hike into the wilderness and yank out the knapweed. We’d never heard of spotted knapweed, but as soon as Katie pointed it out, we realized we’d been seeing it everywhere in Michigan. Its lacy, pink thistle-like flower belies its tenacious fibrous stem, deep taproot and the toxin it puts in the soil that prevents native species from growing.

It was satisfying to spend a few hours with these dedicated folks, pulling out piles of knapweed from along a pristine wilderness trail.

Satisfying...and also discouraging. The stuff is everywhere. The seeds carry in the wind and on hikers’ shoes. The plants need almost no soil or water to thrive. We pulled out bags and bags of it, but we couldn’t get it all.

Spotted knapweed is like lots of toxic things – racism, patriarchy, mansplaining – once you know what it looks like, you see it everywhere. No matter how much we want to eradicate it, no matter how much we’d like the environment to return to its natural, balanced state, its ubiquity is daunting.

Katie the Naturalist (shown above with a spotted fish not spotted knapweed) encouraged us not to despair. “We won’t be able to get it all,” she said. “But if we keep at it, keep clearing out some prime precious places, the natural ecosystem will grow.”

While we traveled through the upper Midwest, I kept thinking about invasives taking over the wilderness. I love these wild spaces and felt sad to think of them being overtaken by things that aren’t meant to be there.

I wondered, too, about my own body, mind, heart and life: what is invading my natural state? What is crowding out my intuition, my creativity, my peace? What is taking over my wilder nature, my own wilder-ness?

As I looked for spotted knapweed in my own heart and mind, I found distraction, catastrophizing and fear. Posts, emails and pictures that keep me busy and numb. Spinning out the worst possible outcome from the doctor’s appointment, my friend’s troubled child or the latest headline. And fear -- at the root of most of my invasives -- of discomfort, of uncertainty, of chaos.

What is it that invades your natural habitat? Social media? Screens? Scary thoughts? News? Nightmares? Needs of others? Work? Worry? What you have to do next? Walk the trail of your experience and look for what is encroaching on you. What is crowding out that which is meant to grow in you?

Your natural ecosystem, your wilder-ness is wide open, spacious and at peace. As Pema Chodron says, “You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got all kinds of big weather patterns moving through me most of the time.

In her book, Diana, Herself: An Allegory of Awakening, Martha Beck writes:

“Just like any civilized person, you’ve spent practically your whole life torturing an innocent wild creature. Starved it, then force-fed it, cut it, cursed it, driven it to exhaustion. Imprisoned it with other creatures who tormented it.”

“What?” Diana shakes her head in miserable confusion. “I don’t even kill spiders! I never wanted to hurt anything.”

“The innocent wild creature to which I refer, my darling, is you.”

What if you nurtured your wilder-ness, your natural state of spaciousness and peace? What if you spent more time in your wild natural state of spaciousness? Maybe you will notice the sometimes deceptively pretty things that are crowding you out. Maybe you can clear some of them away. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to remove all of them, but perhaps you can free a few precious spaces for your wilder-ness to thrive. And maybe that’s enough.