A Walk Through The Unknown
Lately I’ve been living in the in-between. Where nothing is dramatically wrong but nothing feels quite aligned either. It’s a kind of limbo, where the days continue as normal, yet something quiet inside keeps tugging, like a reminder that you’re meant for a slightly different version of your life than the one you’re currently in. Meanwhile, life keeps throwing challenges and it feels like I just can’t catch a break. Like I have no control and life is just happening to me.
It’s that kind of low level stress that eats away at you and you start to realise that something just isn’t fitting right. Often, you have no idea that anything is wrong at all… until it eventually overflows.
Right now, I know that this isn’t permanent; I have faith that I will find my place as I always have. I’ve survived harder seasons and I am still grateful for everything that I have. But knowing that something is temporary doesn’t automatically make it comfortable.
The good news is that sometimes, when life pulls the rug out from under us, we land in a place that we never even knew existed. And sometimes, that place ends up being greater than we could ever have hoped for.
The First Reaction: Anxiety, Then Choice
When the future feels unclear, my first response is usually anxiety. I am an anxious person by nature, so it starts in my body: tight chest, unsettled stomach, a sense that something is wrong even if I cannot name what it is. My mind starts scanning for threats:
What if I’m chasing the wrong career? What if I’ve lost my drive? What if this illness is more than “just a bug”? What if I never get back to feeling like myself again?
That is the automatic part. The animal response. My nervous system does not wait for the evidence. It just wants to keep me alive.
But over time, I have trained a second response. Once the initial wave passes, I’m able to look at it through a different lens: “What if this is leading me somewhere?”
That second feeling is not natural for me. It is the product of a lot of conscious work, reframing and deliberately choosing how I look at the world. These days, as long as nothing is actively telling me that something terrible is about to happen, uncertainty feels more like possibility than threat. A blank page rather than a cliff edge.
The same uncertainty that triggers anxiety in my body can also trigger excitement in my mind, depending on how I interpret it. That is an important realisation. Uncertainty itself is neutral. My interpretation is not.
What We Think Certainty Gives Us
It is easy to demonise certainty, to frame it as something rigid or boring. The truth is, certainty is deeply attractive for a reason. When I feel certain about something, I feel safe. I feel like I can finally exhale. Certainty gives me a sense that I am allowed to enjoy my life and open up new possibilities because the basics feel stable.
In that sense, certainty does not feel like the opposite of freedom to me. It often feels like the foundation for it. When my foundations feel solid, I feel free to explore. When I trust that at least some parts of my life are steady, I have the energy to be brave in others.
The problem is not certainty itself, it is what happens when we become dependent on it. When certainty becomes the only thing that makes us feel safe, it quietly turns into a cage.
You can see it in how most people build their lives. They cling to familiar jobs, familiar routines, familiar roles, long after those things have stopped aligning with who they are. Not because they love them, but because they are predictable. Comfort becomes the main measure of a good life. Comfort zones are designed to protect us from our fears, which sounds helpful, until you realise that almost everything we care about sits just beyond their edges.
We say we want certainty, but often what we really want is protection. Protection from failure. From humiliation. From regret. From the feeling that we might have wasted our time. From the possibility that we could lose what we have built.
Certainty is not just about knowing what will happen. It is about shielding ourselves from what we are afraid might happen.
Learning by Elimination
One of the most interesting things about uncertainty is how often it teaches through contrast.
People like to talk about “finding your passion” or “discovering your purpose” in very positive terms, as if one day you will stumble upon a fully formed vision of exactly what you want and who you are meant to be.
In my experience, it rarely works like that.
I have learned far more about what I value by noticing what feels wrong than by waiting to be hit by some flash of perfect clarity. I now know what kind of leader I want to be largely because I have seen what I never want to replicate. I have learned how I would want to build a company from watching cultures that harm more than they help.
It is like designing a product: If you sit down and say, “I want to create a great product”, you are probably going to get stuck. The space is endless: Great compared to what? For whom? In what context?
If instead you go looking for a real problem to solve, you suddenly have a clear remit. You know the constraints. You understand the stakes. You can be creative within something defined.
Life feels similar. Trying to define the exact life you want, in detail, from scratch, is overwhelming. But being honest about what does not feel right, what drains you, what clashes with your values, narrows the field. Each time it nudges you closer to something that finally feels like you.
Uncertainty becomes less of a void and more of a filter.
What Uncertainty Is Really Doing To Us
So if uncertainty is not just an unfortunate gap between certainties, what is it?
I have started to see it as three things at once.
First, uncertainty builds character. Not in the cliché sense of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, but in learning to sit with not knowing, without completely losing yourself. Being able to tolerate ambiguity without collapsing is one of the most important traits you can develop. Life will knock you off course over and over again. If every disruption shatters you, you will spend your entire life in pieces, trying to glue yourself back together.
Second, uncertainty is where the doors you did not know existed tend to appear. The “spice of life”, as people like to say, actually lives inside the part we try so hard to avoid. You can plan your route as carefully as you like, but some of the most beautiful things that will ever happen to you will arrive unannounced. The friendship you did not see coming. The role you never knew existed. The city you move to on a whim. None of that is born from certainty. It arrives in the space that uncertainty keeps open.
Third, uncertainty is universal. It is one of the few genuinely fair experiences we have. No one is exempt. You can be wealthy or broke, famous or unknown, deeply spiritual or not spiritual at all, and still you will wake up one day with no idea what is going to happen next. In a world that finds endless ways to divide us, that shared vulnerability quietly pulls us back together. We all know what it feels like to be suspended in the unknown. There is something strangely comforting in that.
How To Live Inside It, Without Pretending To Like It
I am reluctant to declare a “right” way to handle uncertainty. I do not want to tell anyone how to live. We all have our own histories, traumas, beliefs and coping mechanisms. What works for one person might be harmful for another.
What I can offer are gentle observations. Things that have helped me, and that might help you too, if you feel stuck somewhere between your current life and the one you cannot quite reach yet.
I think being able to sit in uncertainty without being completely rattled by it is a quiet form of strength. The kind that lets you weather storms without collapsing into fear every time the sky darkens.
For many people, some kind of faith helps. It does not have to be religious. It can be a belief in fate, or a general trust that life tends to rearrange itself in meaningful ways over time. It can simply be the recognition that you have survived every hard thing that has ever happened to you so far, which is not nothing.
Beyond that, I think there is value in actively training yourself to see change and uncertainty as potential opportunity, rather than immediate disaster. Not naively convincing yourself that everything is fine, but allowing yourself to say: “This hurts, this is scary, but there is a non-zero chance that this is also making space for something I cannot see yet.”
Above all, I think it is important to remember that you do not have to be productive inside uncertainty. You do not always have to turn it into a project or a performance. Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is admit that you are tired, that you are scared, that you wish things were clearer, and still keep showing up for your life one small act at a time.
Plant seeds. Rest. Cook a healthy meal. Call a friend. Drink some water. Send the email. Go for the short walk you can manage. Say no to the thing that feels wrong. You do not have to fix everything in one go.
Trading Certainty For Awe
If certainty is no longer the goal, something will eventually rise up to replace it. For me, that something is awe.
Awe, for me, sits somewhere between curiosity and gratitude; it holds both at once. It is the feeling you get when you remember that it is kind of miraculous that you exist at all, that anything exists at all, and that you get to be conscious for a tiny slice of it.
When I look at uncertainty through the lens of awe, it shifts. Instead of obsessing over what might go wrong, I start to wonder what might emerge. Instead of feeling entitled to a smooth path, I feel humbled by how much of life is outside my control, and somehow still full of beauty.
Certainty says, “Tell me exactly what is going to happen so I can relax.”
Anxiety says, “Something bad might happen and I will not cope.”
Awe says, “I do not know what is going to happen, but I am willing to be surprised.”
That is not to say that awe cancels out fear. It does not. I am still human. I still lie awake some nights worrying about money, or health, or work, or time. Awe just gives me another place to stand. A way to hold the unknown that does not shrink me.
In the end, uncertainty is not something to solve, it is a definitive part of life. It might always make us a little uncomfortable. It might always make us wish for clearer answers. But if we can move from needing life to be predictable, to being open to life being astonishing, the in–between becomes a little more bearable.
We may never get the certainty we crave. But we can build something else. We can build the ability to stay present when things are unresolved. We can build lives that are flexible enough to bend with change instead of snapping under it.
And maybe that is enough. Not to remove the fear completely, but to walk with it. To keep going. To remain curious. To stay grateful. To leave the door open for something we never saw coming.
What do you do when life feels uncertain? When everything is out of your control and you’re not sure what might happen next?
It can be a really scary feeling, and if you happen to be going through this right now: you’re not alone, you’re allowed to feel all of the feelings, and my door is always open! Sometimes just talking about it out loud can be a huge weight off!
