Irma Romero
Staff Reporter
Being fearful of an uncertain future: it can stop us from doing great things, and it can keep us clinging to things that are damaging us.
For example, you might be holding onto something for specific reasons of comfort and assurance, even if those items give you anxiety and or cost a lot of money. You might be staying at a job that you do not like. Yet you are afraid of quitting because you are afraid of being a failure. Or, you might not travel to a country that feels very unusual because you do not know what to expect, and then miss out on a unique, life-changing experience.
This is just the beginning of how fear of an uncertain future affects our lives. Sometimes I wonder, “how can I be at peace with uncertainty, how can I let go of some worries that I have for my future?” It is a repetitive question that we ask ourselves many times in our lives because we all deal with this fear.
Where might the fear of uncertainty and the future come from? If you are someone who overthinks and makes scenarios in your mind, a lot can be happening in your head. Think about it, what are the odds of getting into a car accident, and not knowing whether you have a tomorrow. The odds of anything bad happening are not high, but it is that slight chance that they may happen keeping us up at night. The same can be said with imagining good scenarios in our mind. Since we think of all the consequences and focus on the small chance of it actually happening, we end up being fearful of what could come and hold onto that fear.
Whatever happens, we have to be okay with the outcome. Even if that means we do not know what we are getting into. It can be a scary feeling. Why is not knowing so scary? For example, is rolling a dice worrisome?? No, but it is not the “not knowing” where the dice will land that is the issue. The problem is that we assume what comes up on that dice will bring us misery, pain, and loss.
Sometimes, this imagined pain is not physical; most of the time, we do not fear physical injury. It is a pain of failure and change. We are comfortable in this little cocoon that we have been building up around ourselves. These habits, possessions, and people we know are the places that are familiar and safe. Losing this comforting atmosphere and going into a place where we can be vulnerable and the chance we might fail is a scary feeling.
We understand, as we cling to a comfortable idea of how things should be, that when things change, we will feel the sting of that change because we feared it despite knowing it could happen. The change itself is not the problem. It is fighting the change, fearing the difference, and not wanting things to be changed that causes issues for ourselves.
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