Drawing Question Marks
This incipient autumn finds me uncertain. There are many question marks in many areas of my life. I used to draw such detailed sketches, always the list-maker, the girl with the plan until one day I wasn’t. Dreams and projects in the present without pressing deadlines and a lot of ifs and maybes in the margins.
Uncertainty isn’t always an easy friend. I keep looking at it like a cloud changing shape.
Sometimes it can feel daunting, deflating like disappointment. It can feel like I should have figured out at least some of these questions, discarded a few, and discovered new ones to ponder.
Sometimes it’s disconcerting. The questions seem like uncomfortable chairs, and I don’t want to dwell on any for too long.
Sometimes it’s background noise, a rainy day. I see the questions sliding down the windows like raindrops, and it is simply a thing I can accept.
Other times it’s an uncertainty I can embrace. It looks like opportunities to discover, and possibilities to assess. Not the white page that stares in silence but the one you desperately seek as inspiration strikes. It becomes fertile ground for crazy ideas, unlikely adventures, and new friendships. This uncertainty is the one where things magically align, where accidents become anecdotes, and opportunities are easy to find. I’ve seen it recently enough that the memory of it is still fresh in my mind.
There are a lot of question signs in many areas of my life. Some are big, and some are small; some are silly and some I’m scared to answer wrongly. But I’m learning to look at uncertainty with kinder eyes. Questioning everything is a sure way to go mad, even Descartes gave up on that. But trying to control everything, define and organize only seemed to stress me out. Somewhere in the middle, there may be some kind of balance, a controlled chaos, a relaxed roadmap.
For now, I know that there are a lot of question marks and I’m learning to be okay with that. I have a few exclamation marks too, I pick and pack them carefully: truths like trinkets I’ve picked along the way, bright like stars, and confident like compass needles.
How comfortable are you with uncertainty? Or how comfortable are you with uncertainty today, perhaps like me you see it as a thing that changes shape ;)
