Embracing the Unknown

A few days ago, I finished the last coaching session with a client after having worked with them over the past 5-6 months. As we were discussing the progress that we had made at that time and bouncing off ideas on what the plans for the future could be, my client said something that stayed with me for long after we finished our session. He said: 

“Right now I am flowing with life. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring for me. But I am ready for it.” 

This is such a simple statement, but so powerful. It instantly reminded me of a scene in the movie Cast Away when Tom Hank’s character Chuck Noland says “Now I know what I have to do. I gotta keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”  

And that brings me to today’s topic: who knows what the tide could bring tomorrow... And when it does, will you be ready for it? 

Moving Away from Certainty 

In several areas as well as different stages of life it is so common for us to want to take control of all that is around us or at least have some sense of certainty to help us feel secure. We want to know what our future holds; how a relationship will pan out before it’s even begun and how a book will end without having to go through the experience of reading & savoring it. 

For instance, if you’re stuck in a bad job or have the misfortune of working under a horrible boss, you may take on an attitude of almost giving up. You may start wallowing in your situation and give up networking altogether because you have turned cynical that your situation is unchangeable - which sets you on a downward spiral. In such a scenario, even if an amazing opportunity were to present itself in front of you, you may be so caught up in your own mental picture, so engrossed in the limited ways that you don't have the sensibility to recognize the potential that opportunity could bring. In a way, having the certainty about a non-satisfactory life feels safer even when a better prospect (albeit a little uncertain one) comes your way, so you end up sticking to the former situation which does more harm than good. 

Or let’s say you’re not even in a bad situation, but you do have a certain plan made up in your head about how you’d want your future to look like. So rigid are your plans that if an opportunity of a slightly different nature were to present itself in front of you, you would only be thinking about how it doesn’t exactly match your own ideas of how you envision your future to look like, and thus you may end up finding justifications to stick to a mediocre life because you’re afraid of what the road ahead may bring. In this case, you’re not opening yourself to what the tide could bring because you’re not “ready for it”. 

In Cast Away (spoiler alert), after being stuck on the island for what seems like forever, Chuck Noland sees an opportunity and uses it to create a makeshift raft out of a torn toilet seat and finally escapes the island. 

Think about the experiences that you go through – when things are going bad for you in your life, there is a good chance that you are not able to latch on to opportunities that will help you out of your ‘island’ because you are in a state of hopelessness and thus closed off to what may appear in front of you. And that is a huge missed opportunity. 

It is in these circumstances that it is important to remember that nothing lasts forever – whatever it is that you are going through, you will come out of it on the other side eventually.

All you need to do is be open to what the tide could bring your way. 

Taking Things for Granted 

When we’re not looking for too much certainty in our life, we often end up taking things that are going well in our life for granted. We take our long-term relationships for granted, our health for granted. It’s almost like if things were good once, we expect them to continue like that forever, conveniently forgetting that it takes work to maintain things – otherwise it leads to erosion, no matter how slowly or quickly that may occur. 

When the going is good in life, a certain sense of complacency takes over which makes you unprepared for what could come your way – which may not necessarily be a good thing. I’ll try explaining with an example. 

I am a running enthusiast - I go on runs along the Promenade in Pondicherry every morning before I usually start my workday. Back in 2017, I was diagnosed with a pancreatic condition. After getting treated for it, I spent a certain amount of time in recovery – and part of the recovery was to take leisurely walks along the Promenade. During those walks, I would notice that apart from the younger folks even those above the age of 80 were able to easily overtake me! What fascinated me was that the whole time I have been running, I never think of a time when I may not be able to. This is essentially coming from a place of unawareness and taking things for granted. 

Now, this is not something I’m bringing up to make you feel bad about yourself. This is a normal human tendency – we have this predisposition to assume that a certain situation will continue that way forever. And that’s not just for an unpleasant situation, but even so for a good or happy situation - perhaps even more so. I like to call this the ‘happily-ever-after syndrome’. To assume that once things are good, they will forever remain so and thus can be taken for granted – even if it happens unconsciously. 

Tomorrow morning the tide can bring you uncertainty

....and it could come in the form of adversity, such as not preparing for a rainy day or not up-leveling yourself enough to remain relevant and current in your industry.  

I think one of the biggest things that no one could have prepared for was Covid 19. We were all trotting around happily at the beginning of 2020, making our plans for the rest of the year, feeling invincible. And before we knew it, the whole world was taken by a storm. Now one may ask, “Ram, how on earth could we have prepared for something like THAT?” And the question is valid. But look what it has taught us – that we can never disregard something happening just because it seems so unlikely that it could happen so.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith puts this perfectly in one term and calls it the ‘high probability of low probability events’: “We don’t plan for low-probability events because, by definition, any one of them is unlikely to occur. Who plans on a flat tire, or accident, or stalled traffic because of an overturned semi on their way to work? However, the likelihood that one of the hundreds of low-probability events that could occur will occur sometime during our day is very high. We are all victimized, more frequently than we like, by traffic jams and flat tires and accidents.” 

So, no matter how unlikely it may seem for an incident to appear to be a hindrance in your life, it would do you good to prepare for it – a plan B, if you may.  

It’s All in the Attitude 

Now I know how this can come across a little pessimistic – to bring a kind of superstitious Indian mindset which shuns you if you enjoy life too much or have too few many laughs by asking you to quickly quell it, otherwise, tears are not that far away. I am not saying this to encourage you to be unnecessarily negative or annoyingly positive, but rather to be ready for any turn of events. Tides may not just bring you misery, but great possibilities as well. And it is at that moment that it is crucial to either be prepared for it (in case it is something undesirable) or be perceptive enough to see it for what it is (in case of opportunity).  

It’s all about the right attitude. In case of a rainy day, it could be as simple as thinking “Hey it could rain tomorrow, let me buy an umbrella – just in case.” Or if you’re down in the dumps, telling yourself before you go to bed that “Hey, tomorrow could be my lucky day.” It’s as simple as that. 

You can make your plans for your future, but at the same time remain open to possibilities to come your way. While being prepared for what could come and at the same time making space for things to come to you without planning for it – it’s in that the sweet paradox of life where the magic happens. 

The Mother (Mirra Alfassa) says that a regular human being is like a tortoise on the ground – only able to see that which is immediately in front of him. But the Divine is like an eagle, soaring and watching from above. Even though the tortoise may feel like he has reached a dead-end, the Divine knows there’s a way around it. And for that, sometimes all the tortoise needs to do is take a step back and make space for things to fall into place.