I don’t know if everything will be alright. And that’s alright.
This simple acknowledgment feels quite scary in a world that constantly demands certainty. We’ve built entire industries around the illusion that the future can be controlled, that uncertainty is only a problem awaiting sufficient preparation. But we actually have it backwards. This is not to say “Don’t prepare,” but instead accept when things don’t go the way you anticipate as they often will.
The Constant Worry
We tend to worry. But more than that, we worry about worry itself. This cycle, where we’re anxious about our anxiety, creates a strange prison. We lie awake troubled not just by tomorrow’s challenges, but by the fact that we’re even troubled at all! The worry itself becomes evidence of inadequacy, then we spiral.
Yet worry is not a defect. It’s an inevitable companion of consciousness, the cost of being able to imagine what doesn’t yet exist. The question is not how to eliminate it, but how to be with it.
The Myth of Control
We imagine we have control of the future, and we’ll do everything in our power to ensure things go according to our plans. We strategize, optimize, and prepare for every potential happening. There’s a comfort in this ritual. It feels like we’re doing something meaningful.
But often, things just don’t go according to plan. The future we meticulously arranged crumbles. A relationship ends. An opportunity vanishes. The plan fails. And here lies the revelation: these moments aren’t evidence that we didn’t try hard enough to control the outcome. They’re evidence that control was *always* an illusion.
The future is not a domain we can map and conquer. It is fundamentally open, indeterminate, and resistant to our demands, however admirable they may be. To insist otherwise is to wage war against reality itself.
This Is OK. Everything is OK (Seriously)
It’s ok to say, “I don’t know if everything will be fine.” Embrace the uncertainty. Accept the not-knowing. Appreciate the impossibility of guarantees—it really is ok.
When we accept that we cannot control the future, we discover an unexpected freedom. Not freedom from consequences, but freedom from the tyranny of having to know. We can make plans without being enslaved to them. We can act with more intention while remaining open to revision. We hold our expectations lightly, like water cupped in open palms.
This is by no means resignation. It’s the difference between influencing and controlling, between participating and dominating. We can plant seeds without forcing them to grow. And we can show up fully without dictating outcomes.
The Future Does Not Comply With Intention
The more we try to control the future, the more rigid and fragile we become. The less we try to control it, the more responsive and resilient we become. When we release our grip, we discover our capacity to adapt, and to meet with open arms what actually arrives rather than mourning what we expected, because reality can be no other way.
The future teaches us things we cannot learn by planning. It will ask us to become people we cannot become by controlling. Our growth happens not in the carefully plotted moments, but only in the gaps between plans and reality.
The Practice
How do we live this way? We notice when we’re grasping for certainty. We feel the tension of trying to script the unscriptable. Then we practice just... letting go. Not once, but continually, because the impulse to control returns like breath.
We snap ourselves back into presence. The future exists only in imagination; the past only in memory. This moment is the only moment. When we abandon it to worry about what hasn’t happened, we separate ourselves from the only life we have.
We meet ourselves with compassion. On the days when worry overwhelms us, when we find ourselves white-knuckling some pretend future, we don’t compound the struggle with judgment. We simply... begin again.
The Reality
I don’t know if everything will be alright. And that’s alright. Peace doesn’t live in certainty. Peace does, however, live in the willingness to be uncertain, to not know, and to welcome the future without demanding it submit to our design.
The question is not whether we can control what comes next. We cannot. The question is whether we can be present for it and grow through it. Whether we can trust not in our ability to guarantee outcomes, but in our capacity to meet whatever arrives.
This is enough. It’s always been enough.
When suffering comes up, we have to be present for it. We shouldn’t run away from it or cover it up with consumption, distraction, or diversion. We should simply recognize it and embrace it, like a mother lovingly embracing a crying baby in her arms. The mother is mindfulness, and the crying baby is suffering. The mother has the energy of gentleness and love. When the baby is embraced by the mother, it feels comforted and immediately suffers less, even though the mother does not yet know exactly what the problem is. Just the fact that the mother is embracing the baby is enough to help the baby suffer less. We don’t need to know where the suffering is coming from. We just need to embrace it, and that already brings some relief. As our suffering begins to calm down, we know we will get through it.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Living
That was a really interesting read. Some things there I hadn't really thought about, and it's certainly good to see something like that, which has given me some things to try and put into practice.
"The impulse to control returns like breath." THIS. I'm continually coming down on myself because I keep bouncing back to wanting to control things. I know and agree with everything you articulatly wrote... the consistent practice of it is always my challenge.