Hello, today I want to talk about uncertainty and lack of control. It has been an interesting adventure over the last several weeks and months for me, and it illustrates that there is a complete lack of control and everything is uncertain. It’s a certainty of life that many of us like to overlook and not acknowledge, but it is vital that we accept that we don’t know and everything is uncertain.
Currently, I am preparing to move down to Florida. I’m only visiting now, as I haven’t actually moved down here yet. To prepare for next summer’s move, we want to sell our house. To allow enough time because we don’t know how long it would take for a house to sell, we put it on the market now. Who would have known that it would sell in two days?
This trip was planned for the middle of April last year, so the house was put on sale at the end of March. Luckily, my wife had some free time and started looking around for apartments, and she found a suitable one. The new owners came around and asked if we could move out as soon as possible. So, within two weeks, we sold the house, moved, and closed the deal. We signed the last of the papers the day before flying down to Florida. In just a matter of two weeks, we sold our house, moved, signed the papers, and flew down here to spend time with some family who are also vacationing in Florida. It has been quite a wild ride.
My wife is blown away. She says, “You could never plan any of this.” There were a couple of other uncertainties as well. There were a couple of issues that popped up during the inspection and other things that could have messed up the deal at any moment. Many people would consider this extremely stressful, but you can also adopt the attitude of “we’ll see.” Instead of worrying or expecting what the future will bring, you can just go with the flow.
For me, this process wasn’t that stressful because I was rolling with it. If we needed to sign the papers by a certain day, I knew we could make it work the day before we flew out. If we had to get a few issues fixed, I thought, “Okay, that’s fine.” There were surprises popping up everywhere, but for the past couple of weeks, everything has been fairly uncertain. We just went with the flow, finding our way as we went along.
Life, in general, is like that. There are periods when it’s more apparent, but really, every day is like this. Every day is uncertain, every day is unknown. We truly don’t know what’s going to happen. For instance, you might stop at a gas station and decide to buy a lottery ticket, and the next thing you know, you’ve won a couple of million dollars. Or while driving to work, there could be a massive accident, and you get sideswiped, totalling your car. It could be a bad day. Who knows? We don’t know.
The sooner we come to terms with and acknowledge that we don’t know, that everything is uncertain, and we don’t have control, the sooner we can accept and not resist what’s going on. By doing so, we can reduce our stress levels and have more flexibility to go with the flow, accepting everything as it is in the moment and working with what is.
I believe this is an important topic to cover because it’s related to change. When we accept change, we also accept uncertainty and lack of control. It’s worth exploring this aspect until there’s no doubt left, until it becomes crystal clear that we have no control and everything is uncertain. Once we reach that point and are able to accept it, there’s nothing to be feared or seen as a big problem. It simply becomes a mystery, a surprise, and it can even make life more enjoyable.
Thank you very much.
