Why It’s Safe to Trust in an Uncertain Future

Sometimes it feels like life is just a big web of fear— fear of not knowing what the future will bring.

“What if I’m alone forever?” we wonder.

“What if my relationship fails?”

“What if I take a risk and I fall flat on my face?”

“What if (insert your question here)?”

Whatever the question may be, sometimes things happen that shake us to our cores and that leave us with the fear that we’ll be in this place forever and that we’re all alone here. We have no idea what the future will bring, and that scares us to death.

But hold it for a second.

Why does uncertainty have to be so damn scary?

Why does it feel so unsafe? Why does it have to evoke such fear?

Well… maybe it doesn’t have to.

The other day I read a post that said something along these lines: how would your life change if you decided to have “faith in the uncertain future” instead of “fear of the uncertain future?”

Would you stop scrambling to finally know what should be and start relaxing into uncertainty instead?

Would you stop acting from a place of lack and begin trusting in the life that holds and sustains you?

Could fear turn into wonder or even possibility?

The integral question is this:

Even when life is uncertain (which truth be told, it always is), what if you could trust that you are safely held within it all?

Think about it this way: that web of fear that you’re caught in … does it exist in isolation?

Or is every thread of this web held safely within the air… within the sky… within that mystery that is life itself?

The whole world lives within a safeguarding… fish
Inside waves, birds held in the sky, the elephant,
The wolf, the lion as he hunts… the dragon, the ant,
The waiting snake, even the ground, the air,
The water, every spark floating up from the fire,
All subsist, exist, and are held in the divine. Nothing
Is ever alone for a single moment.

-Rumi

Now ask yourself again: what if you knew that you were held safely within that bigger “web” that holds it all… within that web that holds the stars and the sky and every single thing that is?

It’s not a decision that you make once; it’s a decision that you make day after day after day, over and over again. When you wake up and find yourself caught in the web of fear, you can choose to feel that bigger web that holds the fear itself… you can choose to place your faith in that all-encompassing web of life that never, ever, ever ceases to exist.

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[Image credit: Jenny Downing]

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