Finding Comfort in the Unknown
Certainty is rare and yet it’s something I can’t help but seek.
I look for it in the minutia of daily life, and I’ve spent more time than I care to admit focusing on certainty in my future. To no avail. Because, as we all know, life will always dish up the unknown in heaping amounts.
One of the lessons of for us all since 2020 has been that uncertainty is certain. The world had to adjust to a “new normal” or had to let go of “normal” all together. And we carried on.
Before we moved north, C and I shared a small 500 sq ft apartment in a vibrant part of Vancouver. We were steps away from Commercial Drive. Unlike some parts of the city, “The Drive” is unpretentious. It has personality. Health food stores that pre-date the Whole Foods mega-markets, cafes that side-step Venti sizing options and whose default is serving beverages in ceramic drinkware, shops that are in some part a flower shop, in others a dollar store, and also have hints of hardware store. We loved the area.
We didn’t envision living in that apartment long term, but we had just renewed our lease for a third year. In fact, when C traveled across the country for many months of training for a new job, we were confident his work would send him back to Vancouver. When C left, we were full of certainty. We were certain he’d be back, certain we’d eventually move to a larger place, certain we’d stay in the city. That certainty was fleeting.
Soon into his training, C learned that a move was likely. Not certain, but not impossible. Thus, it became an unknown, and I really, and I mean reallystruggle with the unknown. This news brought with it a proverbial dark cloud that lingered over my head day in and day out. I felt paralyzed in fear. I stumbled through my day-to-day, in a fog. The present faded into the background whether I was in the checkout line at the grocery store, at work, or out with friends. My mind was intently focused on the unknown: Where will we live? What will I do? What if something happens to my loved ones? How will this impact my plans? Will life as I know it be over?
That time of my life wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy for C either. But then, one day, we finally had some information. We learned we’d be moving, and we found out where we’d be going. Beaver Creek, Yukon. Many of the same questions and a great deal of fear remained, but my fear of the unknown was mitigated by the sense of control I was gaining by focussing on planning.
Fear of the unknown is fairly universal. When we’re unable to predict what’s next, our body and mind struggle to determine how to prepare. Witness the spring 2020 rush on toilet paper. When I was a child, my anxious tendencies required a studied focus on the predictable: If I go to swim practice, I know I’ll be picked up because my mum will be there. If I go to school, I know the bus will come at 3:30 and take me home. Birthday parties, sleepovers, and school trips were less predictable, less certain so, for some years, they were more or less off limits for me.
Over time, my fear of the unknown became easier to manage. I continue to struggle, but I am no longer crippled by it, and I credit the move to Beaver Creek for at least some of that newfound strength. The move taught me that life altering good can come from the unknown. I’d spent hours, days, months focused on stories I told myself about the dreaded unknown this move would bring, and for what? Based on the experiences I now have had; I’d say for nothing.
Life in Beaver Creek is not a life I’d ever expected for myself. My days here are infinitely different than they were in Vancouver. I kicksled or walk to work. I spend hours each day outside and am connected to the land in a way I’d never envisioned. I traded my Louis Vuitton purse for a backpack and my heels for hiking boots. The unknown presented me with the opportunity to become a ‘me’ I didn’t know existed, but in some way feels more authentic than I’d ever felt before.
And yet, even in my newfound comfort (or ok-ness) with the unknown, I catch myself falling back into the same patterns of thinking. We won’t be in Beaver Creek permanently. In fact, we’ve already been here two years longer than we’d anticipated. As much as we’d like to stay longer, it is, in many ways, just as out of our hands as initial move here was. We are at the whim of an institution much larger than us and that in itself instils fear.
Often, throughout the day, I can feel my mind wanting to slip. It’s like I’m standing on the edge of a great abyss and I know that if I step or fall, I will land in the quagmire that is my own destructive over-thinking. It used to be more familiar to me than it is now. Or maybe it’s not that it’s less familiar, it’s that I know I don’t have to take the step and that I know how not to fall. That doesn’t mean I don’t land in that dark place sometimes; I do. But thanks to the move north and thanks to many other small and large shifts in my life, I’ve learned not only that the unknown is inevitable, but also that if I embrace it, the unknown will become the familiar.
Beaver Creek was once a concept that filled me with uncertainty and fear; now it is the home I don’t want to leave.
