[T]he truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not-knowing is part of the adventure. It’s also what makes us afraid. Wherever we are, we can train as a warrior.
~ Pema Chödrön
Halfway through a hiking and biking holiday with my husband, I break a bone in my foot – the second break in as many years. We’ve been planning this trip for a year and now I can neither hike nor bike.
Head in my hands, I feel terrible, “This has ruined our adventure. I’m so sorry.”
He looks at me and wisely says, “We are still on an adventure. Just not the adventure we planned.
I love a plan. I love knowing how things are going to go – or rather, the illusion of knowing how things are going to go. My gripping attachment to said plans, however, has been the greatest ongoing source of my suffering. I want to know how my class is going to go, what the doctor is going to say, how the election is going to turn out, how everything is going to turn out.
“Tough nuggets, sister,” says the Universe. No one really knows.
It is a true and deeply annoying fact that our lives are based in uncertainty and groundlessness. We never know what will happen … and the actual adventure is whatever is happening.
So when Frank reminds me that we are having an adventure, I begrudgingly get it. I want things to go the way I want things to go...even though my experience has rarely borne that out.
Once at the beginning of a class, I asked the 30+ people in the room, “Who is still on Plan A?” One person raised her hand. She was 18 years old. She hadn’t graduated high school yet. Everybody else was on Plan B, C or Z.
If a global pandemic taught us anything, it has to be this: we never know what is going to happen. And as Ani Pema says, “this not-knowing is part of the adventure.”
Think about your own life. How much of what is happening for you now was something you predicted? How much of the adventure you envisioned is actually happening? What unexpected things changed your trajectory? What unplanned adventure are you living now?
In her book, Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng’s character Mia is an artist who follows her intuition and instincts. When young Izzy wants to know how she makes photographs, Mia says,
“I don’t have a plan, I’m afraid….But then, no one really does, no matter what they say.”
I actually think Mia does have a plan: show up and see what happens, keep practicing and build capacity to respond to what unfolds. This kind of plan feels brave and radical. In my wisest moments, I aspire to it.
When I am at my most skillful, I make a plan and I do my best to hold it lightly and see where it takes me. I choose my adventure with the knowledge that that adventure may or may not choose me.
And when things go sideways or bump off the edge in an unexpected way, I remind myself (or my kind partner reminds me), “I am having an adventure. Just not the adventure I'd planned.”