The Quest for Uncertainty

"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning; uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers." - Enrich Fromm

Early one Thursday morning, nearly four-and-a-half years ago, I was in a Rite Aid buying toothpaste. As I made my way from the aisles of oral care up to the front registers, my eyes happened upon a pretty blond scrutinizing nail polish colors. It was early and all I wanted was to properly brush my teeth before getting ambushed by the need-to-be-caffeinated business men I was about to encounter at work, when something odd occurred. Usually, when happening upon strange women I'd think something like "nice shoes;" that morning I thought something like "those nice shoes would look good on the floor of my bedroom." Interesting, I thought.

Three days later I was perusing the freezer aisle of a Trader Joe's when the woman next to me reached sideways to grab a bag of vegetable samosas. Her crowded basket swung in the same direction and collided with the glass barrier of the open-top freezer, the bag of frozen stuffed pastries slipped from her hands, and everything feel to the floor. I reached down to aid in the collection of the fallen groceries and thought "Yep! Definitely a lesbian!"

It took me no more than 72 hours to go from pseudo-default-heterosexuality to absolute-alacritous-homosexuality. One day I was deciding between Crest and Colgate and before the weekend was over, my entire life's outlook was different. For me, I became aware of my first gay thought, I offered myself the compassion to allow that thought to present itself again (and it did!), and I came to an undoubtable crossroad; I could a) ignore the thoughts and rationalize them into some form of insecurity or b) I could embrace them, stand up for myself, and accept the homosexual perspective as good. SPOILER ALERT: I choose B. This isn't to say that I took my sapphic-realizations lightly, but that when such an indubitable crossroad presented itself, I merely decided to choose the path that lead to naked women.

There's nothing safe about accepting the non-conventional, non-normative sexual outlook, but I did so because it was true for who I was and it sounded like a lot more fun to embrace it than to hide from it. (i.e. pretending to be a heterosexual sounded exhausting.) It might not fit social convention, and it certainly didn't fit the conventions of the people closest to me at the time, but it was me and that was good enough.

I am having the. most. difficult. time. accepting this ideal when it comes to a career path. I have values. I have dreams. I have goals. None of which fit into the "Prix Fixe menu" of the professions available. My personality doesn't match up to some career aptitude test and the realization of that is completely paralyzing for me. I want to write, but I don't want to be a glorified advertiser or grammar inspector. I want to stand up for justice and freedom, but I don't want to sit in courtrooms debating monotony and triviality. I want to be something that matters, but I don't want to sell myself out to get there. It seems reasonable to assume that I could make my own way in the world outside of the dogmatic notions of a career path, but I am having an inexplicably hard time settling into the uncertainty of that.

It's as Henri Fredric Amiel once said: "uncertainty is the refuge of hope."