Several years ago, I joined two friends in a ten-week spiritual practice built around ten life-revealing questions. Each week we took up one question: we meditated on it, journaled about it, and shared with one another what came up for us. We wrote about what we understood about the question and what we didn’t, what we accepted, and what we were struggling with. There were days when I felt quite resistant to the questions, but over time I noticed my heart opening to the practice. It helped me become more relaxed and more able to be in the flow of a loving Divine Presence. (The questions are listed below.)
Through this practice I found two powerful antidotes to fear and worry: curiosity and the ability to stand steady in the river of uncertainty.
When I catch myself spiraling down into fear and contraction, I say to myself, “Pull up, pull up. Be curious, not afraid.” I try to remind myself not to waste time or energy wallowing in the paralyzing force of fear. It is from a state of curiosity that I can most effectively deal with the daily challenges that pop up.
In her book A Slender Thread, author Diane Ackerman suggests that our focus can become like a tunnel with no windows or doors. For me, curiosity brings light into that dark tunnel. It adds windows and doors, opening up a landscape of greater depth and vibrancy. This leads to a sense of wonder and sparks creativity and imaginative thinking. Curiosity helps me to be a pilgrim of possibilities.
The second antidote, standing steady with uncertainty, is related to hope. Václav Havel (1936-2011) was a Czech playwright and dissident, jailed under communism, who helped lead the 1969 Velvet Revolution and went on to become the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic. In his book Disturbing the Peace, he writes: “… The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t… Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”
He goes on to say that hope “is not the same as joy that things are going well… but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed…. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
I’m reminded that hope is not a certainty. This brings to mind something I heard His Holiness the Dalai Lama say at an event in Costa Rica in 1989. During his talk, someone in the audience asked the esteemed Tibetan leader why he appeared so happy all the time, and why he kept working on behalf of Tibet when there seemed so little likelihood of a successful outcome. The questioner pointed out that the Chinese were well entrenched and that the possibility of his returning to a free and independent Tibet seemed remote.
The Dalai Lama responded with a simplicity and power that changed my life forever. He said he chose not to be pessimistic, because it made him feel bad. It was better to arise in the morning feeling positive; he felt better when he was optimistic. He went on to say that he didn’t know what the outcome of his work on behalf of his native land and the Tibetan people would be. Things might improve, or they might not. He didn’t know the future. He did what he did because it was the right and good thing for him to do, not because it might lead to a positive outcome. Doing what he felt was right gave his life meaning.
I carry his answer with me still. I cannot know how things will turn out, for the world or for my own life. What I can do is stay curious, opening windows and doors in the tunnel of my fears, and let hope anchor me somewhere beyond the horizon of what I can see. Curiosity keeps me open to what might be; hope gives me a reason to keep going, whatever the outcome. Together they let me meet uncertainty not with fear, but with wonder.
QUESTIONS TO CONTEMPLATE
Adapted in part from Celestine Chua, “101 Questions to Ask Yourself in Life” (Personal Excellence), and Marc and Angel Chernoff, “50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind” (Marc and Angel Hack Life)
