By Gabrielle Sills with Marlis Jansen
Growing up, many of us are taught to avoid uncertainty. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, they say. From our earliest days, we’ve been hardwired to seek patterns and predict future events in order to help us survive. It’s human nature.
And it makes good sense in many cases — homeowners insurance and annual physicals, for example.
But — what if in our quest to de-risk our lives, we’ve actually overlooked one of life’s greatest gifts?
Rather than being a negative, I see uncertainty as a necessary and unavoidable condition in today’s modern world. Despite the discomfort we experience when we encounter it, it leads to opportunities that we can not plan or predict. And practically, an uncertainty-embracing mindset has proven comforting for me during tough times: for as disappointing as a situation may feel in the moment, it may, in fact, be the precipitating event that allows for something amazing to transpire.
Outbid and on to the next
In 2019, my husband and I were trying to buy a house in San Francisco. We had been living there for 5+ years and wanted to “lay down roots” (why one feels like a house can give us roots is a subject for another post).
We bid on house after house, but were continually outbid. It was frustrating because we would put in time and effort to see each house, research each neighborhood, and come up with a bid, only to learn each time that someone had outbid us, and we would have to start over. Not a big problem in the grand scheme of things but frustrating nonetheless.
Several months into this process, Covid hits. After going stir-crazy in our small downtown San Francisco apartment, we decided to head to the east coast to stay with my in-laws for a few weeks. While we were there, we were notified that my daughter’s daycare in San Francisco would be closing down indefinitely. Then shortly after that, our landlord wanted to raise our rent. Rather than commit to another lease, we decided to stay on the east coast for a bit longer.
“A bit longer” turned into five months, which then turned into a decision to head back west to LA during the winter.
Fast forward four years and we are still in LA, both with new jobs, and quite happy with where things have landed. And I’m quite certain that had we been living in San Francisco with a new home and mortgage, things would look quite different now: we would not have decided to extend our three-week east coast trip to five months; we would not have had the once-in-a-lifetime experience of living together with 10 of our relatives under one roof; we would not have ended up living in LA.
That’s not to say that our life here in LA is any “better” than our life would have been in San Francisco. I have no idea. It’s just a different life than we would have if we had succeeded in buying a home in San Francisco.
Who’s to say?
This idea that we don’t know where things will lead, no matter how good or bad, is the basis for one of my favorite parables. It’s one I originally saw reprinted in Jay Hughes’ Cycle of the Gift:
A poor farmer and his son had one horse that helped them in many of their tasks around the farm. One day the horse ran away, and the son cried, “How terrible! Now we shall starve!” The father said, “Who’s to say it’s good? Who’s to say it’s bad?”
The next day the horse returned, bringing three wild horses with it. The son rejoiced, “How wonderful! Now we shall be rich!” The father again said, “Who’s to say it’s good? Who’s to say it’s bad?”
The son tried to break in one of the wild horses. The horse threw him and he broke his leg. Again he wailed, “Oh, father, now I’ll be a burden to you!” The father said, “Who’s to say it’s good? Who’s to say it’s bad?”
The next day the army swept through their village drafting all able-bodied young men to fight at the front. All whom they took were killed, but they left the farmer’s son with his broken leg.”
To me, this story reinforces that we never know how things will turn out.
“Bad” things often lead to “good” outcomes, and vice-versa.
We’ve all seen this a million times. People lose their jobs, and then end up starting wildly successful ventures — Michael Bloomberg and J.K. Rowling, for instance. Others go through horrible breakups but then end up finding Mr. or Mrs. Right.
I recently saw a documentary called Norita, based on Nora Cortiñas, a stay-at-home mom whose son was kidnapped by the Argentine government in 1977, an event which led her to become one of Argentina’s most influential activists in the “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” movement. As another example, Taffy Brodesser-Akner underwent a traumatic birthing experience, which led to a bestselling book and series: Fleishman is in Trouble (her story is captured in this recent New York times article).
This is not to say that we should consider horrible events as “good.” I’m sure, for example, that Nora would have given up all of her success and fame as an activist to have her son back. Taffy is very clear that she would not wish her harrowing hospital experience upon anyone. But what these stories demonstrate is how we don’t know where things will lead, and even the most trying of circumstances can lead to positive outcomes, if we allow them to.
Connecting the dots
The reason we can’t predict where things will lead is that there are limits to our agency as humans; we live in a world where there are many other powerful forces at play.
One of the most prominent illustrations of the unpredictable and complex nature of life is the Butterfly Effect, in which its creator, scientist Edward Lorenz, explains that outcomes are inherently unpredictable in sensitive systems: small variances in conditions can lead to profound and widely divergent effects on a system’s outcomes. You may have heard the popular example from the 1990 movie Havana in which Robert Redford explains that “a butterfly can flutter its wings over a flower in China and cause a hurricane in the Caribbean.” The more complex a system is, the harder it is to predict outcomes. And there’s no more complex system than that of life.
Rather than dwelling too long on any particular outcome, it’s much better, therefore, to bring yourself fully to each moment and then see how things unfold. As Steve Jobs’ shares in his famous graduation speech at Stanford University in 2005:
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Steve Jobs was able to look back and see how everything he had experienced — from being adopted to taking a calligraphy class to being fired from Apple — had led him to his success, in ways that he never could have predicted.
Money is (not always) power
How does this all relate to money? One of the biggest benefits of having financial wealth is an increased sense of agency. When things go wrong, one has additional resources available to solve whatever problem they’re facing. Kids struggling in school? Get them a tutor. Train canceled last-minute? Grab a taxi. Having extra cash on hand gives financially wealthy people an increased sense of control in many circumstances.
But money is not a silver bullet, and everyone hits dead ends when circumstances take things out of our control.
And it is in these moments, when our resources have failed and we no longer have agency over a given situation, that we must learn to accept the result we’ve arrived at. You might not get into the school you wanted. A loved one might pass away. It is so hard, but we must try our best to meet these moments with the recognition that “who’s to say.” That we are experiencing a tough moment in time but have no idea where a course will actually lead. To acquiesce to the moment with flexibility and acceptance, instead of rigidity and rumination.
Ask yourself
I find it comforting that I don’t know exactly where my life will lead me or what the outcome of any particular circumstance will be. It doesn’t mean that I don’t set goals or work towards particular outcomes, but I enjoy knowing that there are some surprises in store and feel optimistic that if I pay attention, things will work out.
Take a moment to reflect — what about you?
- Have you ever experienced a good situation that’s led to a bad outcome or a bad situation that ended up leading to a good outcome?
- Are you going through any experiences now that would benefit from a reframing?
- Do you ever ruminate when things go wrong? If so, how do you pull yourself out of it?
The combination of unpredictable circumstances and our ability to affect change is what makes human life so special. We can all impact our trajectories, while still being subject to the greater forces of the world around us.
I wish for you that things will go the way you want them to, but, in those moments that they inevitably don’t, try reminding yourself “Who’s to say!”
