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Embrace Uncertainty for a Saner 2022
No matter what happens with the pandemic from here, don’t miss its greatest lesson
For Christmas this year, I made two sets of plans: Plan A was to go see my partner’s family a few hours drive away, where a big traditional Christmas day meal would be had. Plan B was to stay home and cook a beef and red wine stew, go for a walk, and probably hang out with our cat.
The curious thing about this distinctly pandemic-era predicament was that I had zero preference one way or the other. In the two weeks leading up to Christmas, it was unclear to us whether it would be wise — or even allowed by our embarrassingly inconsistent prime minister— to travel to see family, so we made two plans and simply waited. About 48 hours before our indented departure day, we made the decision to go. There was very little stress involved.
Let me tell you, this is not how I would have behaved in the same situation two years ago.
Indeed one of the great gifts of pandemic life for me has been increasing my tolerance for uncertainty. Once I had optimized my life for the new pandemic reality in summer 2020, I simply stopped expecting external events to stay predictable and reasonable. I started keeping my expectations reassuringly low, taking little for granted, and tried to take in just enough information to calculate my personal risk assessment, and then stopped reading the news. When I got to safely see friends and family or do fun things, I was delighted. When I didn’t because things felt too risky or someone got sick or it didn’t seem right, I just accepted it.
That’s not to say I am Buddha and haven’t also struggled with the vagaries of pandemic life like everyone else. But I think much of the suffering associated with the Alpha/Delta/Omicron roller coaster of the last year is people’s deep desire to return to a pre-2020 time when things felt more certain. When we could make future plans with more confidence. When life wasn’t so damn uncertain.
At various points in the pandemic, it’s been possible to pretend that we were back in that time. You certainly see people acting as if we are. But here’s the funny thing: Life was never that way. Not in 2019, 1919, or any year in between. And just ask anyone with a…
