Zones of Uncertainty

For the last few weeks I have been talking about taking charge of your life, Today I want to talk about zones of uncertainty. This story starts in my school with my geography teacher. I was studying in the foothills of the Himalayas, we could see the Himalayas on the other side of the school. She took us out and asked “What do you see beyond the mountains?” We looked at the mountains and had all kinds of crazy answers. After about ten minutes it was quite clear that we didn’t have a clue of what she was looking for or what was beyond the mountains. Then she told us lets go back in and study and find out what is beyond the mountains and that’s how I remember the mountain range Himalayas and how I studied it.

That’s a very interesting way of taking charge of a thought and then discovering. This fits in pretty well with what I wanted to say about taking charge of your life through zones of uncertainty. So what do you do when there is a zone of uncertainty in life? I have faced zones of uncertainty very often and I am sure this is true with all of us.

I am reminded of wood drifting down the river being extremely comfortable with the zone of uncertainty in terms of where the bend of the river will go. And the wood drifts till it reaches the shore and then it stays at the shore. Whereas the stone, which is seeking higher certainty - it’s a metaphor - but the stone seeking higher certainty sinks because it wants to stay put in that particular place. It is not allowing itself to float and drift and discover the right position to be in, unless there is an external force of high current, which rolls the stone down the river. When I look at this metaphor, when I look at this example, what comes to my mind is most of us, when we reach zones of certainty we know how to run our lives, hopefully. But when we reach a zone of uncertainty, we try very hard to find certainty in that uncertainty. Maybe the right way to take control of your life is to allow yourself to drift because I personally believe that we have instinct, and the reason we have instinct is that logical minds are not the only sense organs we need to use to take charge of our life, and do what we want to do. There is feeling, there is experiencing, and there are instincts. At zones of uncertainty if we let things drift and let things be for a period of time, then as soon as we spot the shore, I am sure we will swim hard to get to the shore, but if we start swimming when uncertainty is at the highest without knowing the direction in which we are going. Yes, we are in control of our destiny, yes, we have our charge in our hands, but it would be foolish because it is important for us to understand that in zones of uncertainty, maybe the right thing to do is to allow things to drift a bit, allow us to experience that feeling, allow us to develop that instinct for the situation. When all the elements come together take charge of life all over again, then start swimming very hard.

So I believe that in the times of uncertainty as we are going through today, coming out of economic recession, it may be time to drift, take it easy for a bit and then as soon as your instinct tells you that the time is right, start swimming very hard by taking charge of your life. If you like this thought or want to add to this thought, or have a new thought on how we all can take charge of our life, I will be very interested to hear more about you.