Learning to live with uncertainty

This day started like any other. I woke up and did my usual little yoga routine in bed—a comforting habit that helps me land in my body before the day really gets going.

But not long after, the day took an unexpected turn.

I felt something itchy behind my knee. At first, I thought it might be a small scrape or a scab. But when I looked closer, my stomach turned—it was a tick. Ugh!

I grabbed a pair of tweezers and removed it as carefully as I could. While doing that, I remembered an interview I once read with an entomologist—a bug expert.

He explained that ticks don’t really serve any meaningful function or provide any benefit. When asked the follow-up question, “Then why do they exist?”, he simply replied:

“They exist… because the possibility exists.”

Not exactly a comforting answer. Not educational or moral. Just a cold observation.

Our search for meaning

There’s something deeply human in how we may respond to explanations like that.

We so badly want everything to have meaning. We want there to be some kind of logic behind pain, discomfort, and setbacks. We want to believe that the bad things in the world—from tiny ticks to massive tragedies—exist for a reason, part of a larger story.

But sometimes, that’s just not how it works.

Sometimes things happen without rhyme or reason. A random coincidence, a fluke, a biological chance that simply took hold. Desperately, we search for meaning—and sometimes we settle for explanations that soothe us for the moment. Just to feel some kind of peace.

We call it fate. We call it evil. We call it karma.

All in an attempt to create structure in the chaos. And while it may help in the moment, the discomfort tends to creep back in.

The stone in the shoe

It’s like a small stone in your shoe—not unbearable, but there, quietly reminding you.

When we take the stone out, there’s a moment of relief. But does that mean we’ll never get something in our shoe again? Of course not. We’ll have to empty it over and over as we go through life.

That doesn’t mean there’s some malicious Shoe Monster targeting us. And it doesn’t mean life is out to get us. Sometimes, things just go wrong.

If you ask a successful entrepreneur or an enlightened monk—do they live in constant peace, free of fear and struggle? Of course not. It’s easy to think so when we only see the surface, but everyone has their ticks—their small, invisible trials.

So what should we do? Just accept everything and let life happen without trying to shape it?

No.

A small sting to avoid a bigger one

We truly have incredible possibilities to make the most of our lives. We can build safety, balance, and meaning—not by controlling everything, but by doing what we can, right where we are.

To return to that little tick behind my knee—some things can be prevented. Like TBE, for instance. Through vaccination. And that’s exactly what I chose to do after today’s little reminder of life’s unpredictability. A small sting, to avoid a bigger one.

Maybe that’s what life is really about: not finding a perfect explanation for everything, but learning to live with uncertainty—and still doing the best we can with what we’ve got.