The Art of Living with Uncertainty: A Lesson from Vipassana & Rilke
Photo by Michael Shannon on Unsplash
For the last few months, I’ve been grappling with a decision. Deep down, I feel I know what I need to do, yet I haven’t found the conviction to take the leap. Some days, it feels like I’m missing a crucial piece of the big picture. Other times, I wonder if I’m simply taking the cowardly route by not “deciding.”
Whenever the uncertainty becomes overwhelming, I’ve taken some steps—but they’ve been impulsive rather than intentional. And since this decision involves another party, even those steps haven’t led to a resolution. Just when I was ready to move in a particular direction, others weren’t.
It’s frustrating when you wrestle with a difficult decision, one that feels obvious to you, yet those around you don’t see it the same way. At times, it felt like the universe was conspiring against me to keep me exactly where I was.
One of my coping mechanisms in stressful times is reading—books, articles, thought pieces. Maybe it’s a way to distract myself from my own thoughts. Or maybe, deep down, I’m searching for guidance in someone else’s words.
That’s how I stumbled upon this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke, an Austrian poet:
“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
As I read those words, my body loosened up. The shared struggle of searching for answers and not finding them made me feel less alone. (Isn’t it ironic how knowing others wrestle with the same uncertainties can make us feel better? 🙂)
It also reminded me of an epiphany I had after my first Vipassana retreat in 2019. I had first heard about Vipassana in 2014 and had tried multiple times to attend, but something always got in the way. I kept talking about it, and in the meantime, my brother and a cousin went before I did—which frustrated me because I was the one who had told them about it in the first place!
But when I finally did the retreat in 2019, I realized I had needed to be ready to truly absorb its teachings. I had to go through certain challenges in life to take away what I did from that experience. Had I attended in 2014, I might have learned the technique, but I would have missed much of its depth. And so, I came to see that when things don’t happen on our timeline, there might be a reason for it. (That doesn’t mean we stop trying, of course.)
Back to the present: “The point is to live everything.”
Had it not been for this period of uncertainty, I wouldn’t have reflected so deeply on what truly matters to me. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to navigate difficult conversations, to balance my own needs with those of others, or to practice self-compassion in moments of doubt. It was in living the questions—in embracing the discomfort of not knowing—that my obsession with finding the “answer” began to soften.
I still know the direction I want to move in. I still hold my intention firmly. But I also recognize that the path isn’t fully revealed yet—and that there may be discoveries along the way that are just as important as the answer I’m seeking.
So, let me ask you:
Do you find yourself in a state of indecision or questioning right now? What might change for you if, instead of chasing the answer, you experimented with living the questions?
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