On moving ahead with uncertainty2 mins read

‘The need for certainty is the greatest disease the mind faces.’ – Robert Greene

Sometime last week, I saw the above statement in a tweet posted by Ryan Holiday on my Twitter TL. PS: I saw the tweet while laying on the beachside of Miami, not from anywhere within Nigeria. There is still a Twitter ban in the country, even though FG says they didn’t stop Nigerians from accessing Twitter.

Back to today’s post. The tweet, for some reason, resonated with me and I took a screenshot of it to view at a later time. I took another look at it just before I started writing this. Personally, I love planning things to the last item, because I am not exactly a fan of surprises. And when I plan, I expect that those things work out the way I have planned for them to unfold. I am increasingly learning that that is not always the case as so many things are out of our control.

In the spirit of accepting the uncertainty that comes with living, I am choosing to move ahead even when I don’t know what the future holds. I am also training my mind to understand that the past can’t be changed, and I cannot know for certain what an alternate path or decision would have achieved. All I can ever have are guesses, which may be far from accurate. In some way, that’s the inspiration for writing a post today after a long while.

Starting today, I would be sharing posts weekly. I have considered doing this for some time now but have been wary of either not having much to say or being very gloomy with my words. Accepting uncertainty in this regard for me would be trusting that I would have something to share weekly. And that ‘something’ would be uplifting, informational and/or thought-provoking without being pessimistic.

I am writing this late on a Sunday night because I really just wanted to get to it and not let this week slide (does the week start on Sunday or Monday?) Lately, it’s like Monday shows up and the next thing another Monday presents itself.

One last note tonight. In the past week, I have been getting prompters, from conversations with friends to articles I find online and newsletters, around the question ‘what do you want?’. It seems like a simple question and at some point in my life, I knew the exact answer to this, specifics and all. However, I am realising that it is a question we have to keep asking ourselves at intervals. The intervals could be between jobs, quarterly, annually, or whatever time frame is convenient. I also think an important indicator that we need to ask ourselves that question (and answer it) is when we feel unsettled in our current state. We most likely would know when we need to have a sitdown to answer it.

I would spend the rest of the night attempting to answer the question for myself. It would definitely require more than a single night of introspection but it’s a good start anyway.

I am excited that I was able to push myself to write this, however imperfect it may be.

See you next week,

Sisikunmi