Often members of our Reiki healing circle feel inspired to gift or loan others a book, a magazine, or other uplifting material. A few weeks ago I received an older copy of Tricycle Magazine, and the following passage from Joanna Macy strongly resonated with me:
With the gift of uncertainty, we can grow up and accept the rights and responsibility of planetary adulthood. Then we know fully that we belong, inextricably, to the web of life. Then we can serve it and let its strength flow through us.
Uncertainty, when accepted, sheds a bright light on the power of intention. That is what you can count on; not the outcome, but the motivation you bring, the vision you hold, the compass setting you choose to follow.
For much of my life, I never thought of uncertainty as a gift. I love Joanna Macy’s insight that when you accept and embrace it as a present from the Universe, it intensifies your intentions and hones your focus.Then it’s just not us out there alone doing the things we are doing, We’re calling on unseen yet palpable universal forces that guide, strengthen and amplify life endeavors, dreams, and desires.
Macy’s quote also calls out the elephant in the room- the motivations underlying our actions (or in-actions) in the first place, and often, our attachment to narrow, desired outcomes.
Do we hold back or hide, thinking that what we have to offer is not worthy or valuable to share?
Do we get hung up over whether we’ll be be accepted, understood, or approved of if we honestly and authentically express ourselves?
Do we allow perfection, procrastination, people pleasing and putting others first to be excuses for not risking or taking action at all?
Uncertainty is a force of nature. Some days the hawk goes hungry; other days it catches a mouse or a rabbit. Dormant volcano Mount St. Helens violently erupted into life in 1980. Within days, signs of new life emerged. Over the past three decades, the landscape there has continued to regenerate in a continual dance of risk and action, the outcome never quite known or finite, the only constant being change.
There’s a lot of freedom to be found in partnering with uncertainty. We invoke the best in ourselves and know that we’re not alone as we venture out into the world with our unique natural talents and gifts.
We do our best today more relaxed and trusting over how things will turn out. Hopefully, at the end of the day we also more compassionately look back and know that we did do our best, and remember there will be new opportunities to give our best tomorrow as well.
Otherwise, to quote hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, “You miss 100% of the shots you never take”.
Beautiful Hobie – I am certainly at a place in my life that I am riding the wave of uncertainty and in some ways it is a relief to not have life all planned out, but to allow it to emerge as I follow my heart.
Thanks for sharing how this post speaks to you, Jamie. I think it was John Lennon who said that life is what happens when we are busy making other plans. Things seem to be a lot more fluid and adaptable in the natural world, as compared to what the majority of human beings (myself very much included here!) seem to pine for in the not really separated at all parallel universe we tend to call “the real world”.
It’s cool remembering that the seasons change over time, the sun, moon and other things in the sky rise and set from our earthly perspective, tides ebb and flow, and we don’t have to do anything at all to make those things happen. Every day upon awakening it’s fun to ask, wonder and welcome what will happen today without any effort on my part. Nature has given us innumerable gifts that come to us so freely and without anything in expectation in return-that’s a great reminder for me to freely and without expectation just put myself out there, enjoy everything, and have no expectations. Easier said than done of course, but I applaud you in allowing things to emerge and for following your heart, no matter what!