I’m 26 years old, although I don’t believe in acknowledging aging. Because this is a reality I’m still learning to live with, sometimes I remember my age and get scared for my future, like I was five days from my earth’s birthday in August.
I had just completed an intensive internship program with an outstanding community in the marketing industry of Africa, which I termed a blessing and breakthrough this year, looking back on the last depressing 5-7 years. I had some ongoing personal projects and a full-time remote job I loved but I felt ‘free’ and uncomfortable with that freedom. My mind began to roam, questioning the career path I was on, wondering how long I’d survive on my current paycheck, asking myself if what I did was what I’d do for the rest of my life and if it would get me to where I want to be in the coming years, fearful that I’m already close to 30 in earth’s time and not a lot of things seems figured; not where I’d prefer to settle down or the job of my dreams nor have I started on the books and personal literary projects I had and had romanticized, not even how and where to further my education as I’ve always wanted. I felt stuck in the town I lived in, in my career and my life as a whole, and wondered how long my life was going to move slowly. These desires, fears, and questions put me in a place where nothing seemed to make sense, even after I just completed a program that 134 people applied for, only 10 got in and I was one.
But, is there ever a time when life is figured out totally? I asked myself a few days later. I’m guessing you’d agree to the rhetorical answer – No. Then why do we fuss about it? When and where do we draw the line or find comfort in living amid questions, chaos, and so much uncertainty?
In my opinion, the point about these fears and how they make us question the uncertainty of life is that man in his entire form is an intelligent being and intelligent beings desire some form of control which he doesn’t have in most cases. There’s a level to which man can control his outcome. For example, a man simply wants to eat lasagna on a fateful day. He goes ahead to buy the ingredients for his stellar recipe to satisfy his craving, while he is still preparing the ingredients he gets a call that his twin brother got involved in an accident that leaves him in a coma. His life goes from abandoning his preparations to fulfill his cravings to days of late breakfast and eventually losing his twin brother. Unexpected. It makes no sense. If he knew, his small mind would have done everything to prevent it – put the situation under control.
Control, for man, is something we desire but don’t have. This is really what we worry about when life takes unexpected turns and we can’t make any sense of it. We couldn’t control it. What can we do then?
From my experience, I explore three things to make sense of my situation when it doesn’t make any bit of sense.
- Sit with the feeling.
More often than not, people are more uncomfortable with the feeling of not being okay, being in control, or boredom. I don’t think we should shy away from these moments, but rather sit with them and let them be a guiding light in being human and finding answers. I imagine that when we don’t have these questions, we probably either stopped growing or we have grown to have so much confidence in something or someone other than you, even then, these questions take a different form like the worries that come with praying, hoping, and ensuring your child doesn’t turn out ‘badly’. The point is what becomes of life if we can predict everything? Will it become worth living? By all means no. Sitting with the feeling, helps you cultivate hope, stillness, and clarity. Maybe not the answers but strength for the answers and every other day. Don’t run away from it, sit with it. Like Lamentations 3:28-30 tells us ‘When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. Don’t run from trouble. Take it full-face. The “worst” is never the worst’, it shows us that when we sit with that feeling of discontent and despair, we realize the hope after it, especially after we’ve prayed honestly.
- Journal & Remember.
Journaling helps us in many ways than we often realize. The best impact of journaling is the idea of being seen. When we struggle with uncertainty, we think we are alone but when we journal how we feel, our guilt, mistakes, and pains, we immediately feel like we are not alone, and that alone gives us a sense of peace, taking away the fuzziness and heaviness we once felt. Even while we journal, learn to remember good times – times the unexpected was a blessing, times we had memories of a deceased loved one that made us smile instead of cry, times we did things out of the normal that when we remember them we cringe with cheerfulness – they don’t only bring hope but put our failing at ease knowing that life is still worth living. Don’t you want to see what next good it holds?
- Find someone to encourage.
How do you encourage someone when you need some encouragement? I have come to realize that there will never be a time when we won’t need encouragement because living is trying to make sense out of living. That’s why there’s suicide. But if we must make sense of living, we’d realize that we would constantly need encouragement. What better way to be encouraged than to encourage someone? From my observations, the beauty of encouraging someone instead of focusing on what’s not making sense in your life, is that life begins to make sense after that. You’ll realize that though you don’t have all the answers, your presence to listen, hold, embrace, and lovingly kiss a person on the head in need becomes the answer to their questions and yours as 2 Cor 1:3-4 says ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, [4] who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we receive from God.’
While you go through life, in the haze of uncertainty, one thing that has helped me is knowing & remembering that I’m never alone. So even right here, right now as you read, with all the situations around that don’t make sense, you are not alone.
