Overcoming the Uncertainty of Our Dreams With Small Steps
“You only need to know the direction, not the destination. The direction is enough to make the next choice.”
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what next to do in my life.
It’s a place many of us often find ourselves. The thing is, we get so stuck with the specifics and exactness of it all that a cloud of uncertainty takes over and makes the dream seem impossible.
Which European city would I live in? Will I sell my business and become a writer? Would I be willing to give up a life of comfort for simpler one filled with more adventure?
All these questions quickly bring on a sense of overwhelm, and anxiety starts to creep up my body, finally resting on my throat, where I can’t speak, write or think about it anymore. So I quickly abandoned my thoughts and let my dream sleep in a far-away place.
And as cliche as it sounds, we were designed to traverse life one step at a time, preferably towards a particular direction.
Generally, I know what I want to do, where I want to be, and how I want to feel in the upcoming years of my life. So all I’ve got to do is follow that direction without necessarily having the whole picture revealed to me.
The direction might incur slight detours over time. I might find that I took a few wrong turns here and there. But in the end, it is all about living on a path. There is no right or wrong way.
As Carl Jung said in response to someone asking him to advise on what to do with his life:
“if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious.”
Often we feel that our lives are rudderless and may be heading the wrong way. If so, then we must stop everything right now and start slowly changing direction. We can’t allow recriminations as to why we were wrong to halt our progress.
We can only press stop on the current movie of our life and start a new one.
Often the decision to change direction is simple, but the actual action is hard. Excruciatingly hard. It might mean we might suffer great pain in the short term, but when we take action and make decisions, we open up a new path.
It’s like having a bad wisdom tooth, but we’re too afraid to see a dentist do the inevitable and remove the tooth. True, the procedure is painful, and we might feel its effects for several days, but then after a short while, we won’t even remember all the pain we went through.
Jung continues in another letter:
“When one is in a mess like you are, one has no right any more to worry about the idiocy of one’s own psychology, but must do the next thing with diligence and devotion and earn the goodwill of others. In every littlest thing you do in this way you will find yourself. [Everyone has] to do it the hard way, and always with the next, the littlest, and the hardest things.”
We must take small steps in the direction that we’ve chosen.
I’ve always dreamt of living in a Mediterranean town. I want to regularly watch the sun slowly descend east and disappear onto the vastness of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s not only about the beauty of a seaside town but also the peace, connection, and authenticity that it would bring.
To fulfil my dream and move to this town of my dreams, I know that I’d have to take several hard decisions and still have no clear destination.
Perhaps, I’d have to sell my business, save more money than I’ve ever done, leave friends and family that I’ve grown up with. All difficult acts that are hard to fathom right now.
And what would I do when I’m in this idyllic town. No one gets paid for watching sunsets. Can I start a writing career and earn money from it while in my mid 50s?
The truth is, I have no clue. I have no certainty of how this plan will work out. That fear of the unknown has paralysed me for the last few years. My dream has died many deaths before, and it’s hanging on by a mere thread.
Recently, I’ve come to see that my battle is not about chasing sunsets and dreams; but instead, it’s about overcoming uncertainty.
I’ve craved control to stave away uncertainty all my life. I always want to know what’s coming next. As a result, I’m over-organised to the extent that I can’t remember the last time I was surprised.
I’ve overanalysed everything from small acts when to drink coffee during the day to how many words I must write a day to finish my memoir. In the end, my fear of uncertainty has killed much joy in my life.
Just imagine watching a movie knowing how it ends, or reading the same book over and over again, or eating sushi every single night for the rest of your life. Where is the adventure, surprise and possibility in all that?
Paradoxically, when I look back at some of my best moments in life, they were born of uncertainty. It is often doing spontaneous and novel things that bring us the most delight.We don’t know what to expect in these situations and react in new ways that invigorate and challenge us.
On a recent trip to a writing retreat in East Austin, Texas, I saw many young people(there’s no one over thirty in East Austin)riding electric scooters on the streets. So naturally, I wanted to try one as they were readily available on every street corner.
At first, I was scared and unsure how to ride one on the streets with cars driving along the same road. So I studied a couple in front of me, tried it out on a quiet road for about ten minutes and then I took the plunge into the main road and never looked back.
It was one of the most exhilarating things that I’ve done recently. I got to know Austin so well when using the scooter, much more than I could’ve using taxis or walking.
In winning small battles with uncertainty, I know I’d start to allow myself to live more comfortably with uncertainty. That familiarity would let me take giant steps towards my dream without allowing my analytical mind to kill it.
I can now clearly picture myself in a small port town, drinking a coffee, with a cigar in hand and laptop in front of me while I watch the sun descend into the turquoise waters, beyond the small sailing boats directly in front of me.
I don’t know how to get there and I don’t know when I’ll get there.
But, I’ve started walking towards that Mediterranean port town.