So, while we see uncertainty as innately unwanted, because it means bad things might happen, uncertainty is also our protection against bad things. Because at some point, in any life, something bad will happen, and it is the inherent uncertainty of what that bad thing will ultimately mean to you, what it will lead to, and what it will reveal, that enables us to have a more enduring and resilient kind of hope. A hope that doesn’t wish for bad things not to happen—because they sometimes do—but rather one that enables us to see that bad things are never the whole story. They are as filled with uncertain outcomes as everything else.
In short, we never know. The only certainty is uncertainty. And so, if we are to reach any kind of constant comfort, we need to find comfort in uncertainty. And it is there. Because while things are uncertain, they are never closed. We can exist in hope, in the infinite, in the unanswered and open question of life itself.
Portal
Each of us has the power to enter a new world. All we have to do is change our mind.
Nothing is closed
One of the reasons we like stories is because we like structure. We like a beginning, a middle, and an end. We especially like a good ending. Think of all the times our opinion of a book or a movie has hinged on the ending. If a movie has a terrible ending it often ruins the whole thing for us.
The film director Jean-Luc Godard said a story should have a beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order. And I used to love that quote, and agree with it, until I went through a breakdown and craved the comfort of classic narratives. Of beginnings and middles and ends in that order. And I liked endings that wrapped things up nicely, with a big bow.
I craved resolution. But of course, life doesn’t really have a resolution. Even death isn’t a resolution. Even if we don’t believe in an afterlife, we have to acknowledge that the world after us goes on in unknowable ways, and also the ways people will or will not remember us are unknowable too.
There are only open endings in life. And this isn’t a curse. This is a good thing. As the Buddhist thinker Pema Chödrön puts it, “we suffer from resolution.” I find that idea so liberating. To admit that closure is unreachable in a universe where everything is open.
The bearable rightness of being
Being > doing
Reconnection
My anxiety feels very much a symptom of modern life. At its deepest, years ago, I began to notice that it was always at its most acute when I was doing something that would have been entirely alien to our cave-people ancestors. Walking in a crowded shopping center. Listening to loud techno music. Wandering under the artificial light of a supermarket. Sitting for too long in front of a TV or computer screen. Eating a bag of tortilla chips at one in the morning. Stressful emails. City centers. Packed trains. Online squabbles. Modern mental overload.
It is no coincidence that the things that comfort me when I am super-frazzled, the things that calm and soothe me, tend to be things that reconnect me to my natural self. So, for instance, going to bed shortly after it gets dark rather than staying up till one a.m. to watch eleven episodes of a TV show one after the other. Or walking in nature with our dog. Or cooking real food with real ingredients. Or being with loved ones. Or switching from the sofa to physical activity. Or planting some herbs. Or swimming in the sea. Or staring at the sky. Or running in the fresh air rather than on the treadmill.
Of course, I love the pleasurable distractions of modern life. I like that our world is one with podcasts and movies and video calls. But when I am in that state of deep fragility, where I am stripped of my shell, I find the shortest path back seems to be the timeless one. The natural one. The one to do with reconnection to our natural world and our natural selves.
A note on joy
On Madonna’s first trip to New York she is said to have told her taxi driver, “Take me to the center of everything.” For many years before my breakdown that was my approach too. I had trouble with just being. I always wanted to be somewhere else, closer to the center of the excitement. So I escaped into alcohol. Drugs. Raves. I needed the loudest noise, the spiciest food, the most violent movies, the most extreme everything. For me this meant three summers in Ibiza working for the largest nightclub in Europe, being at the center of noise and people and stimulation. The fact that the nightclub was called “Manumission,” which meant “freedom from slavery,” drove the point home for me. To be free was to be in the thick of all the buzz and distraction life could offer.
I was a deeply insecure person. I had low self-worth. In the winters, back in London, I would apply for jobs. Then when I got them, I would be so worried about people seeing through me that I wouldn’t be able to enter the building. I felt like a human mirage. Empty on the inside. So rather than face the void, I tried to escape it.
The only problem is that you can’t run away from yourself. Wherever you go, you’re always there. Even on a dance floor at six in the morning.
Running away from yourself is like trying to run away from a lamppost with a bungee cord tied around you. Sooner or later you are going to spring back and have a mighty bump.
Or, in my case, a total breakdown. A full smorgasbord of doom. Panic disorder, depression, OCD, agoraphobia, and a belief that I wouldn’t be able to go on living through so much. Which is the irony, of course. My desperate desire to avoid pain and discomfort led to me feeling the worst pain and discomfort of my life. It trapped me inside it. For days, months, years.
And to get out of that I had to ultimately find some kind of acceptance. This might be a funny thing to say in a book with “comfort” in the title, but pain is a part of life. A part of all life. And so it is also a part of the good stuff too. “Inspiration and wretchedness complement each other,” as Chödrön puts it. But what is good about suffering? What can be comforting about suffering? Isn’t suffering the opposite of comfort?
At some point, you have to accept your own reality. Even if that reality includes depression and fear and pain, alongside other things. And when you accept it, you accept other things too. The more genuinely pleasurable things. The pleasure that can be found by being yourself, rather than escaping yourself. Of being able to look someone in the eye, human to human, without any shame or stigma. Of accepting that life connects joy to pain and pain to joy within the same breath.
I didn’t need to go out and grab life. I was life.
A spinning coin
Uncertainty is the cause of anxiety, but also a solution. While everything is uncertain, everything is hope. Everything is ambiguous. Everything is possible. We exist on a spinning coin. We cannot predict how it will land but we can enjoy the shine as it spins.
You are alive
You can sound confident and have anxiety. You can look healthy and feel terrible. You can speak well in public and be a wreck. You can be externally privileged and not mentally privileged. You can lift barbells and be weak. You can have everything and feel nothing. You can be cut adrift and look ashore.