The Year Of Living Ambiguously

For the past few years I have been learning to embrace ambiguity. I confess my pace has been slow, but it has also been steady. There is, thank goodness, evidence of real progress. Throughout my 40+ years as a laboratory scientist I always searched for answers to questions that would provide the striking clarity of black and white, even though I knew the world was decidedly gray. It was, in fact, the one thing of which I was absolutely certain. Yet there is for most of us something comfortable in the simplicity of a world with well-defined boxes, however shallow that view may be.

Living in the present offers us a similar ambiguity, and it would surely be easier to look forward to an end point or to focus on a goal. Similarly, most of us are naturally drawn toward the illusion that we might know where our life's journey is leading, and such simple certainty once again provides familiar comfort. To be here now, however, to trust in the moment, to be content with what is, and to enjoy just being – within these values we can discover genuine clarity. Learning to Be the Journey is difficult, but striving to attain that wisdom affords us a truer and more assured path of contentment and serenity.

Patience, Grasshopper.

TGB