“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

– Rilke

We tend to be quite impatient in our pursuit of life. The unresolved, uncertainties, ambiguities – the very stuff that life is made of – can be quite threatening. The open-ended nature of things can make us feel insecure. So, in many subtle ways, the mind seeks control, looks for comfort, hopes to gain security, and longs to find certainty.

However, when we try to eradicate uncertainty from life, we curb some of its beauty too. The unpredictability of life is what makes it dynamic, vital, and vibrant. The attempt to create resolutions and conclusions takes some of the magic away from the mystery of our unfolding existence.

This unknowability about how things will develop and what will happen is what creates curiosity and awe in us. As Osho said: “Don’t call it uncertainty – call it wonder. Don’t call it insecurity – call it freedom”. It is all about how we view and interpret this aspect of life that determines the quality of our experience in the face of ambiguity. We may cower in the face of it, or rise to embrace it.

The poet Keats celebrated this ability to remain open and embrace the unresolved. He called it ‘negative capability’:

“At once it struck me, what quality went to form a man of achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason “

The human mind is very intolerant of not knowing. It is terrified by it. Thought often functions as a way to solve problems, create conclusions, figure things out, and resolve the questions in our lives.

But life can’t be forced in this way. Everything is a process, and everything unfolds in its own time. The purpose is not to get to the point where we figure everything out and we understand things perfectly. The purpose is to behold the wonder of not knowing – the mystery.

When we have a big decision to make, or something we want get more clarity on, or figure out, instead of jumping ahead and trying to force a resolution and gain an answer, we can instead practice patience, and trust in the not knowing, rest and relax in that place, knowing that an answer, clarity, the right decision, will emerge of its own accord, in its own time.

In the meantime we can settle into the ambiguity and try to enjoy the confusion and uncertainty that is a big part of life, being open to seeing what we can learn from the experience, what beauty or wisdom may lie hidden in its midst. If we can remain curious and inquisitive in the face of the unknown, these qualities can create the space in our minds for answers to arrive in their own time.

It can help if we realise even if we don’t know how things are going to turn out, and indeed that they may not turn out as we would like them to, we can always trust in the way things are right now. This is the only reality we can know and rely on. This is where certainty lies. This is where we find security. The way things are may not be to our preference but we can learn to befriend the present moment and come to peace with it and continue to trust in this reality, and our ability to deal with it, as it unfolds moment by moment.