Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
"Uncertainty is my canvas." ~Carol Mossa
If you bother to look up the word uncertainty in a dictionary, you'll find that the word has some rather negative connotations: doubt, anxiety, mistrust, skepticism, and suspicion, to name a few. What if we substitute the words: wonder, magic, surprise, opportunity and joy instead?
I wake up every morning with a Ioosely formed plan for the day, but I always leave room for the unexpected, room for the divine to show up with a surprise or two. That surprise might be a phone call from an old friend, an invitation to lunch, perhaps a book I'd forgotten I'd reserved at my local library is waiting. I wake each day routinely expecting, as the late spiritual teacher, Eileen Cady, once wrote, expecting my every need to be met. the answer to every problem. and abundance on every level. I am rarely disappointed.
In 2015 I embarked on a two-month cross-country book tour to promote Linger Longer: Lessons from a Contemplative Life. I had a tentative itinerary, a thumbnail list of speaking engagements, but it wasn't uncommon to receive a message from an acquaintance along the way asking if I was going to be in his or her town. I'd pull my car over, look at a map, and more often than not remark, "I could be! What do you have in mind?"
What if you let go a little, stopped clinging to the pseudo certainty of every waking moment? Go out on a limb. Go somewhere alone. Talk to a stranger. Try a new food. Take a class. Treat uncertainty as your canvas. I do my best work when I can’t see what’s around the bend, when I have more questions than answers, when I allow the process and spirit to move me in unexpected ways.
Uncertainty redefined.
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