Embracing the Terrible, Delicious, Ambiguous Unknown

“Life is known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with change and the unknown.”

–Rachel Remen.

In a word: FAITH. A believer at least knows the theory of how they should approach life; whether they do that in deed or not is another question altogether.

As I drove along the roadway from work recently, I noticed before me pilot vehicles, police escorts and then two enormous low-loader articulated trucks; a payload of gigantic metal parts took up the immediate vista. Great! It was good at least that I was going in a different direction, so I afforded myself a look of wonder at the size of the operation.

What I didn’t expect was to be met further along by this moving world of metal; suddenly I find myself behind this convoy. Any thought I had of passing and going on my way at the speed I chose evaporated for the next twenty kilometres. I found myself, yet again, surrendering. There’s nothing more I could do. It was time to cool my heals.

Effective surrender is a key outcome of faith; a preponderance of acceptance. I was in the hands of others and just had to submit to the system before me.

This is a pretty easy example, notwithstanding the desire to become impatient and annoyed—of which anyone’s capable given a lack of self-control.

“Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”

–Gilda Radner.

Whilst my traffic example is hardly worth a response of well-founded pity or sympathy it demonstrates how easily things change in our momentary lives. We never really know.

All we can do is continually train ourselves to more and more embrace the delicious ambiguities that arrive on our doorsteps, smile and get on with it.

Life’s like that. And it will never, ever change. Change is inevitable. The unknown stands before us right now. Looks tasty!

© S. J. Wickham, 2009.