Uncertainty in a Pandemic

Not long ago, I started a new job. This job was supposed to involve a significant amount of travel. Then the coronavirus happened.

My four kids, in four different schools, had been staying busy with friends and activities. Then the coronavirus happened.

Last fall, my wife and I booked a trip to Europe for our family. We have been planning this trip for years. We were supposed to fly near the end of May. Then the coronavirus happened.

Now all six of us are home, including our oldest who was at college until the pandemic forced his school to shut down. For the past couple of months, I have been faced with a lot of questions and relatively few answers. Questions like:

• When will our kids get to go back to school?
• How will I adapt to this new job without the ability to travel to see colleagues and customers?
• Will we be able to take our long-awaited family trip to Europe?

I'm sure there were other questions too, but you get the idea. I was working with a lot of uncertainty associated with the unknown nature of this global pandemic we've been facing. I'm sure I'm not alone.

In my desire for answers, I found myself turning increasingly to the news. I scanned headlines and read news articles, jumping from one to the next in search of information that would enable me to predict the future and answer some of these questions. Of course, it didn't really help. No one knows how this will play out. While I found some of the articles informative, and much of my search was useful, it didn't give me the answers I was seeking. Unfortunately, I also found myself increasingly unhappy as I bought into the negative tone of many of the articles. And, stuck on the idea that my search would help me answer my questions (which, of course, it can't), I became addicted to my search without realizing it.

There were a few days when I got sick of what my search was doing to me, and I swore off my phone, including the news. Taking a day off now and then proved very insightful. I was amazed at how tightly the addiction had woven its tentacles around me in such a short time. Multiple times within the space of an hour's meditation, I found myself watching the urge to reach for my phone arise and slowly fall away as I gave it my attention without allowing it to take over. At the beginning, the urge came up repeatedly, maybe five times in as many minutes, then gradually died down.

A minor addiction like this isn't the end of the world, but it was beautifully liberating to allow my awareness of it to grow and watch it dissolve.

Without any help from me, time has begun to give me answers to my questions.

• My kids won't be going back to school this year. Perhaps they will in the fall. Hopefully.
• I am adapting to my new job in unexpected ways, but the transition is going well. I expect I will be able to travel in a few months, and that will make me even more effective.
• It looks incredibly unlikely that we'll be able to take our trip to Europe as planned. We haven't canceled yet, but we almost certainly will. We hope we can take our trip next summer.

These are first-world problems, of course, not life threatening problems. But my desire for certainty in these areas has driven me to seek certainty in ways that led to a decrease in my happiness. While my certainty is slowly growing, there is still a large amount of uncertainty in our situation.

And that's ok. It gives me a chance to practice being at peace with that uncertainty.

Many people deal with serious uncertainties on a much more regular basis. How many people in the world are uncertain when they will have their next meal? How many are uncertain when they will see a loved one again? How many are uncertain whether they will live to see another day?

Uncertainty is a part of life. And a wonderful way to let go of our ego, release our need to control, and surrender to the flow of life. Becoming comfortable with uncertainty is a spiritual practice. And one that we are all becoming a bit more familiar with during this global pandemic.

It's natural to be uncomfortable when we don't know the answers. But maybe see what happens if you try embracing the uncertainty rather than fighting it. See if it doesn't feel a bit liberating to let go of the need to know.