I am in a pool of uncertainty.
I don’t know this until I open up my phone while waiting to order coffee. The first thing the internet shows me is a video of Cate Blanchett saying that there are only islands of certainty, and perhaps the place of not knowing—uncertainty—is the most consistent and reliable one.
She is quoting Clarice Lispector:
“…there are certain advantages in not knowing, like virgin territory, the mind is free from misconceptions. Everything I do not know forms the greater part of me: This is my largesse. And with this I understand everything. The things I do not know constitute my truth.”
I let this sink in and realize I am not really, totally uncertain—which has, up until this point, presented itself as intense anxiety and self-doubt—I am (or have been) on the brink of a new kind of certainty. Not a magical, life-altering answer that would solve next week’s inevitable problem, but enough of a solution to keep me moving forward.
The self-doubt I mentioned was telling me that I am not a fiction writer and I’ve chosen the wrong form and everyone can see it but me and who do I think I am to even try. My self-doubt is very unoriginal, I’m bored just writing this.
I think, even though this doubting is very, extremely uncomfortable, it is to some degree, comfortable. Oh! I’m human! I’m suffering! This is my plight. Not solving our plight is the thing we know best. Sometimes, though, there is a required slap in the side of the head that pushes you to take the thing that’s looming over you and just… figure it out! Figure. it. out.
(Just “figure it out” is basically what my husband said on the third night of me insisting we either watch old episodes of Top Chef or another Ghibli movie to comfort my sad head.)
Specifically, my uncertainty was about how I speak about my work, which I am usually quite confident in when I am talking to myself about my work. It’s the talking to other people and not finding their questions to be a total assault to my ego that’s the hard part. That—the feeling that I’m facing a confrontation and not just having a conversation—is what I realized I have to deal with: my own sense that their question is some kind of an affront, when really it is just a question, and usually a good/suitable one at that.
I was at a book launch a couple weeks back when an author advised me never to defend my work. OHHHHHH, that’s it. Clarity. That’s the action, or at least, the mindset. Don’t defend your work. She had said that the right people will get it, and the wrong people are not who you wrote the book for. Wow, omg, of course I won’t defend my work! because it’s true, I don’t have to.
A friend of mine who is going through something wildly different than I am (a plight nonetheless) put it this way: “don’t negotiate against yourself.” And I think that fits. Defending my work as valuable in the form it has taken would be negotiating with what I already believe to be true: my work is valuable in the form it has taken. Say it again! My work is valuable in the form it has taken.
Not knowing something, or having the solution figured out yet, is really just…how it goes. Walking around knowing everything all the time would actually make this whole life thing pretty pointless. It’s when the not knowing mounts to paranoia—loves to breed—that you kind of need to start paddling a little harder. Or find a good Cate Blanchett award ceremony speech, I don’t know.
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