Taking leaps of faith does not come naturally to me. Given my risk-averse nature, perhaps I should have pursued a career built on control and predictability. Instead, I became a psychotherapist. A profession that requires me to sit in uncertainty for a living. The irony is not lost on me. Especially now that I find myself attempting to persevere through the most devastating period of my career. Arguably, the most catastrophic and stressful event that can happen to a clinician professionally.
Hardship brings growth if you allow it. That has been true in my life, in fact it’s almost been the theme of my life. I lost my father unexpectedly, and to say it was untimely is an understatement. That experience of grief taught me that when you find yourself wading in a vast ocean of pain, you have two choices. You either succumb to the waves and sink, or you swim. Sink or swim. At the start of grief, many people don’t realize or believe that there is choice hidden within suffering.
As a child, uncertainty felt unbearable to me. I would often go to my mother with questions about the universe, life, and death. My parents raised my siblings and me in a pragmatic sort of way. If they knew the answer, great! If they didn’t, they said so. They did not sugarcoat life. They refused to offer certainty where none existed.
I hated it.
I vividly remember crying to my mother, pleading, “Just lie to me, Mom. Tell me you know for certain.”
Without fail, she would respond, “Chloé Ellen, control is an illusion. I can only tell you what I think. No one knows for sure what’s going to happen, and that’s just the way it is.”
At the time, her honesty felt cruel. Looking back, I see it as a gift. Have you ever witnessed a three-year-old spiraling into existential dread? It takes grit to bear witness to that and endure it in service of reality.
Now, as an adult with context and a fully formed brain, I understand that there are things that cannot be known. Things that cannot be controlled. No amount of preparation, professionalism, and good intentions can fully protect us from uncertainty.
In recent years, that lesson has been cemented in ways I never could have predicted. I’ve learned that you can do everything right and still find yourself facing consequences you did not earn. You can work diligently, elevate others, follow the rules, and still become collateral damage in someone else’s subjective reality. People are people. People misunderstand. People project. People lie. Some people are undiagnosed and/or untreated Cluster B. Some people are so miserable and dark that they aim to snuff out the light in others.
As a result, bad things can happen to good, well meaning people. People who are undeserving of the chaos thrust upon them.
Through my experience, I have learned that the real test isn’t whether you avoid risk altogether. Nor is it whether you maintain control of the narrative. The test is how you decide to react and endure when the worst-case scenario presents itself. How do you continue to flourish when the risk you took has a net negative reward? How do you accept being silenced and misunderstood, unable to defend yourself on advice of counsel? What is there to do when your efforts to prevent harm and fix a broken system prove futile? What do you do when the “bad guy” wins?
You might decide to spend the rest of your life trying to eliminate uncertainty. Let me tell you, that is a farce. Uncertainty will always have the final word. The question is not whether trouble will come. The question is what you will do when it arrives?
Will you sink or will you swim?
I tend to default to standing on the shore, searching for certainty before stepping into the water. I can hear my mother’s voice now “no one knows for sure what is going to happen.”
It is time I stopped waiting for certainty.
I’ve put on my swimsuit.
I will be paddling.