The Certain Uncertainty

Life is full of twists and turns, with too much change and too little permanence, and too unpredictable. Just when you thought you’ve figured it all out, the world turns upside down. Just when you’ve readied yourself for changes about to come, it settles down and quiets itself. It makes planning your life both skill and luck.

What makes living in this world quite interesting is that even if you don’t have any choice where and how you start out, you’ll never be quite sure where you’ll end up.

No one, obviously, had any choice whose parents they will be born from. You weren’t allowed to choose which country to be born at, or what time or which conditions. We were just brought here, into this world by some universal scheme that could be attributed to combination of exchange of genes, chance encounters, long-winded decisions; and for some people, divine intervention. Whether you want it or not, or whether it was due to some accidental online dating or arranged marriage, you were brought here without your permission nor any input on the matter. Although so much more complicated, it is like playing a game of cards. You are given a set of cards when you start. Those set of cards are drawn from chance or skills of the host’s hands – you having nothing else to do but to accept. We may start out with a ton of privileges – in a rich a powerful family, or we may start out with almost nothing but a name. 

Does it matter how or where you start?

Quite frankly, it does. It determines your course and how you act on it. How you start determines a great deal of the kind of life you would lead and what type of person you can become. It isn’t the only factor, but it does play a large role. Your chances in life starts the moment you are born, your set of cards already laid at you waiting to be played. The game of uncertainty for your own time in this world begins here. Even saying that is an irony, for ‘your own time’ isn’t quite your own. You share this world with so many others trying to gain their own piece of the puzzle – therefore you share your time and life with them as well. 

It may or may not take some great will and effort to veer out of the course laid at your feet, depending on so many things. It always depends on so many things, never on just you or one other factor around you. It’s always a combination of them. At the least though, the possibility of carving out your own path is always there. It is never completely out of your hands.

Your chances of changing the course of your life may sometimes be limited but they are always there. Though things might sometime seem dim and constrained, you always have a chance. That chance may even be the same as when you think you have all the luck in the world. Sometimes it just needs a little bit of faith and open-mindedness.

The beauty of it all is that you’re never certain – not about life, or how you go through it and not even death. The key is to accept all possibilities.  Who knows, you might not be happy with what you’ve always wanted but you’ll be in what you’ve always despised.

When we start to consider these things and someone asks what your life is going to be and how it’s going to turn out, the probable best answer would often be:

“Who knows?”