Uncertainty

I was going to start this post with a clever quote about how my life was like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, but being a good researcher, I looked it up first.  And got confused about how exactly I would make the comparison, so I’ll forgo the quantum mechanics analogy.

I feel like there is a lot of uncertainty in my life right now.  The exciting part of that is there is a lot of possibility.  There are many different paths before me, mostly having to do with my work and financial life.

Krieg Barrie many paths
Illustration by Krieg Barrie

But which one is the right one for me? And which ones are only figments of my imagination?

Some of them I have very little control over, as they depend on other people’s decisions.  If it is a yes, the path firms up.  If it’s a no…poof! That path vanishes.  Other paths I have much more control over, but for one reason or another, I do not choose that path.  It may look the most stable and secure, but my heart just shrivels up when I envision myself five years down that road.

I’m on the edge of something big…I can feel it.  (Incidentally, several other friends of mine have expressed the exact same sentiment in their own lives.)  The something big is still shrouded in the mists, though.  I feel like I am hovering in limbo, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or the light to suddenly turn on and the mist to clear.  But what if the mist is waiting for me to make up my mind? What if it is up to me to make a definitive choice, to speak the words of commitment before the mists will clear?

There is one direction my heart calls me towards. From my current vantage point, that direction leads to a huge abyss.  I tell myself that if I didn’t have a family, I would take the leap.  Would I really?  With my children, I don’t feel that choice is really in alignment for me right now.

And so I hover in anticipation.  I flow with each moment as it comes, and I take time to vision where it is that I DO want to end up six months from now.  Because if all possibilities are before me, I feel I’m better off making up a story that I like rather than worry about the options I don’t like.  If nothing else, this time in my life is teaching me to worry less.

I’m curious.  What would you do?  Would you jump off the cliff into the complete unknown?  Or would you bide your time on the safer path?