I find it so funny how I can often talk about something repeatedly, yet it doesn’t often sink in until I get a certain perspective of it that gives me a larger context of it in turn.
For example, I’ve been talking about certainty and uncertainty lately, with it flowing around my head, but until today, it really didn’t hit home until I realized something that gave me a larger perspective and context of it.
What happened is that I’ve been exploring possibilities of returning to gaming but doing so to teach growth and development. This is something I’ve wanted to do for sometime but just couldn’t figure out the best way to do this.
However, certain events have been unfolding over the past year that could make it possible for me to use a game I previously played to do so.
Yet while in discussion with other people from the community about the possibility of it, something suddenly stood out and rippled outwards across the current concept I was envisioning, the stance gamers usually take within video games, and all the way back out to the way I’ve been struggling to live my life the past decade or so.
What this relates to is something I said before about how when I was assisting someone earlier this year, the main thing that kept coming up was that they wanted a shortcut to help them get past the struggle they were undergoing.
But I just realized today that it’s much, much bigger than this.
What this person who I helped, this game community I want to help, and myself who I want to help all have in common is this.
We all want certainty in our lives.
In effect, this person I previously helped was actually fine with taking a certain path of growth and development, even committing the time to it, but they wanted certainty that it would pay out and effectively work before they committed to it.
Many gamers want the same thing in that when they play, they often want certainties, so as to be able to control the game their way and dominate within it.
And I wanted the same thing in that I wanted to be certain people understood my life as a role-playing game framework before I committed to it fully.
Yet none of these approaches focused on certainty are how life actually works, nor how even games work.
If there is no uncertainty within life or a game, then you’re not really playing it because playing means embracing at least some uncertainties.
Even more so, the only way you can maximize your untapped potentials and truly discover yourself is through playing and embracing uncertainties.
In other words, embracing uncertainties opens up the potentiality of possibilities to emerge.
Yet what I’ve realized I’ve been doing the last decade of my life is that I’ve been looking for certainties first before I do something which limits me in turn.
In fact, a lot of my posts on this website take this same certainty stance, in that I relay I’m going to do something first before doing it, so as to seek a sense of certainty in the choice.
Yet the only way you can know if something is going to actually work is by doing it first, seeing what emerges from it, and then navigating forward based upon the results.
So how does one let go of this desire for certainty though?
The first step that I’m realizing is through awareness.
Become aware of when you’re seeking certainties before doing something and then realize the futility of that perspective.
Then become aware that you need to actually do something first, stepping into uncertainties, to see what potentials can actually possibly emerge.
In a nutshell, this embodies the dance with life or, as I’ve stated before, what it means to truly be an adventure of life.