Uncertainty is one of my least favorite places to be, at least when I am aware of it. It’s the place I always dwell; we’ve never had the comfort of a known future. We’ve had fulfilled plans, routines, and stability, but we haven’t had the absolute awareness of events before us. So many superstitions are about conquering the powerlessness of unknowing – here’s some cards, some stars, and a glass sphere. None of them actually work, but some of us, sometimes, are willing to believe.

Uncertainty is where we are vulnerable, and none of us like that. We’d rather be in control of our circumstances: having enough, able to plan, and confident we’re going to get through OK. Vulnerability feels like weakness, because it is. It is also an inevitable part of the human experience, but let’s not talk about that, OK? None of us really want that to be true, even if we accept it.

How to describe 2024? The zeitgeist is dread. I waited for the elections the way I have waited in life’s transitional in-betweens: before the new job starts, before I moved to the different state, before the baby arrives. I know there is a transition and I know when. After that? Well, not sure.

Most of my life is lived hyper-locally – my days are spent with my family, my job, my street, and my community. It’s not that my state and country don’t matter – they do. Heck, they fund my paycheck. It’s that I often experience it as a matter of stories that impact my empathy. A lot of it feels very far away. But it trickles in. Federal funding is key to how my community ends homelessness. Federal funding pays for housing, shelters, and staff. My entire career exists because of federal spending.

I am in a place of uncertainty and that is a place that’s gasoline to a fiery imagination. People became powerful whose values abhor me, who have influence over the things I care about, and who strike me as irresponsible. I could grind my mental gears to dust imagining all the ways the future could be bleak.

In this moment I know what the present is, because I live there too. I know that the rose in my front yard is a lovely maroon, the pleasantries I am exchanging with neighbors feel nice, and my home is warm. The sun has risen in the East every morning – I guess if that stopped, we can let go of all of our worries. None of those imagined futures are real. At least not yet. We don’t know which ones will be, but we know what is threatened. We can do our best to prepare and it is inevitable we will do so imperfectly.

Something came up at work where a colleague was describing how the rumor mill was unkindly characterizing what their team’s future would be. And I did what I could to express compassion and told them to take everything one step at a time – we do not know what’s next. It occurred to me, after I hit “send”, that maybe I need to take my own advice. Meanwhile, at home, I’m inventorying the pantry, trying to make sure we had enough food for quite a while if we suddenly weren’t to have access. We’re walking distance of one grocery store and biking distance to two others – but we’re also in blizzard country, and the winters getting warmer increase the odds of debilitating storms.

The warmth of our winters, as of late, also extends the growing season in the most chaotic ways. I threw down mustard seeds on Halloween in case they could grow – they have thus far. It’s been more microgreen than salad as I have thinned them, but it’s also been my garden nourishing me. It was uncertain that they would grow, but I tried anyway.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus tells his follows that if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. In my faith tradition (Unitarian Universalism), instead of an unprovable belief in divinity, it’s more common to interpret the mustard seed as a metaphor of love. That a bit of love can move you to do great things.

Uncertainty is a place of discomfort but it’s also a question of what to do next.

What will you do next?