The mind is so funny. Actually it’s sometimes funny, but mostly it's a pain in the ass. It spins and weaves tall tales and elaborate stories, mostly about me…and my fate, and spends most of its time tying to convince me of the palpability of it’s tapestries…as if to say “look what I’ve made, you’re bound to touch it soon!” And I take its finely woven piece and I drape it over my shoulders, and I wear it. I do life with it wrapped around my neck. And as heavy as it may be, as much as it weighs me down and slows my pace, I find some kind of contorted comfort in its presence. As if by living with fear of the dreaded thing(s), I will somehow be more prepared in the case of it actually coming to life. Sound crazy? It is.
And my heart flutters and the heat rises to my cheeks, and
the moment, the one that’s actually real, is stolen away, lost forever.
What is it about uncertainty that the mind hates so much?
Why must it replace the unknown with narratives of the future? Why does it
dwell on impeding doom, terrorists’ attacks, melting ice caps, disease, and political
unrest?
To give the mind some
credit, occasionally what it imagines really does happen. Sometimes we live out
our worst nightmare. But the difference is, the mind, in its spinning and
weaving, always fails to include the grace and peace of God. It never remembers
your strength and steadfastness. It forgets that you’re a warrior and an experienced sailor who has already weathered many storms. And in the
midst of the battle, I don’t look the way I did in my mind, and either do you. It’s
true that bad things happen, but why do we insist on living out these
experiences over and over again in our heads when the probability of them
coming to pass is small. Like really
really small. I mean, take some inventory…how many of the terrors you have
imagined have actually happened? For me it’s probably about 0.00001%. And thank
God because if not, I would have died a million deaths in fiery car wrecks, roadside
bombs, plane crashes, and cliff jumps. I would have been diagnosed with every
disease WebMD has to offer, lost everyone I love, grown old alone or not at
all, and been a victim of tyranny. Yeah, that has all happened in my mind. Whew!
So why do we fall prey to the minds eye time and time again?
Why do we subject ourselves to so much unnecessary suffering?
The truth is we don’t
like uncertainty any less than our minds do and we are seeking a kind of
comfort and predictability in all the wrong places. Find a bump? Google it. Hear
about a mass shooting across the country? Google it, and make sure to read the
whole article then do some background research on the killer. Oh and the
tornado in the Midwest, Google that too, and then watch some of the footage on YouTube.
We inundate ourselves with disaster of every kind and give
our minds, which are for reasons known and unknown, already prone to disastrous
thinking, a mighty foot hold to hang on to.
So shall we bury our heads in butterflies and The Office episodes? No, absolutely not.
But when we go into the enemy’s territory, we go in suited up, with a sword in
one hand and a flare in the other, ready to fire it off the moment you feel
yourself sinking, and your conscious, sensible self will come to the rescue.
And sometimes we just don’t go. Sometimes we’re not ready.
And most importantly, we have to get our sea legs. Our sea
legs give us the ability to walk steadily on a ship being tossed in the wake of
a large and endless sea, with erratic swells swayed by fickle winds. When you
have your sea legs you no longer fear the unknown, you’ve come to terms with
the flightiness of the open waters, and have even learned to embrace its uncertainty.
Because this, the promise of change from one second to the next, is really the
only thing you can be sure of. So you
live your life in accord with the universe, taking each drum and roll as it
comes to you. And come hell or high water, you sail on.
" All that I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen." -
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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