“Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity!”
~ Gilda Radner
So there is alot in my life right now that is uncertain. Ambiguous.
Perceived changes I am struggling with ….
Another fellow writer, wrestling with ambiguity, describes: “You know when a complicated problem arises, or a relationship or job or phase in your life ends, and you can’t wrap it up all tidy and fresh with a big shiny bow of order and clarity? I hate that. A lot of people hate that. It means things aren’t all simple and easy, but have now been rendered murky and uncategorizable (made-up word!) by the shape-shifting forces of ambiguity. It is ambiguous. Is there a more lovely, confounding word? It has a prickly, complex beauty, but it’s the sort you’d rather admire in a museum than in your actual life.”
So how to deal with it?
Yoga, and our asana practice, is useful, in that it teaches us to stay present. I say it often ….
Asana: To sit or rest peaceful in any moment. Vinyassa: To flow with this uncertainty.
And while this practice is all good and well – teaching us to sit and flow through the muck and the stories and the emotions – sitting with it still doesn’t make the muckiness any more pleasant. We just learn not to be so reactive to it. It doesn’t make the muckiness go away (which is really what we want to have happen right?).
So why are we so adverse to this ambiguity? Well, like most of us, I was taught to be adverse to change and ambiguity by my parents. By my college. By business associates. By society as a whole. “You’d better find an answer and make it snappy.” Grades count on it. Success counts on it.
And yet, the only constant is change.
But time, and time again, our mind won’t accept this basic truth. We struggle to make orderly what is ultimately irrational: Us, i.e., nature. Unresolved things = not cool! Buddha lessons of course: We are always trying to push away pain and gain pleasure. Which simply results in what? More suffering!
I’m always amazed, and a little freaked out too, at how often my Facebook Scroll will mirror my thoughts on any given day …. Further proof that struggle and happiness are universal … we all feed from the same cup of consciousness.
Jennifer Pastiloff over at TheWellnessUniverse.com apparently was feeling just what I am feeling. While on a long overseas flight, she started to think about an email she got from someone in her life that said “We need to talk.” And there she sat on an 8 hour flight, and made up stories about the email. And none of the stories were good.
Just like Jennifer, when I drift off into the ethers of “I don’t know what’s going to happen land” I get lost in panic, fear, confusion, worry, self-loathing. Being in a place of ambiguity can be very, very painful! You get it …. No doubt you’ve been there too :).
Research says that people who have a high need for lightning-fast closure in processing information, tend to be more likely to make snap decisions, to be rigid in their thinking or to ignore alternate opinions once they’ve made up their minds. They also tend to be less creative.
They are, in short, more close-minded, because they don’t want to sit around waiting on an organic resolution.
Exactly as yesterday’s post on Happiness clearly stated: Happiness is not found in the past, nor the future. Happiness can only be gained in the present ….
So what did Jennifer do about the ambiguity? The only thing any one of us can do: Stay present. Stay here. In our bodies. In this moment.
Learn to trust, and allow time for the organic solution to present itself, the solution that the Divine intended.
In closing, Jennifer offers up some really beautiful advice: Practice not knowing.
Delicious Ambiguity!
Resources: Jezebel – How to be totally cool with not getting closure
