You check your inbox, put the phone down, then pick it up again. The message you’re waiting for hasn’t arrived, but somehow, the absence feels worth checking twice. Meanwhile, the afternoon is going by.
Waiting can make even ordinary days feel provisional, as though life will resume once someone gets back to you. Advice to “let go” rarely helps when you still care about the answer. A more useful place to begin is with the uncertainty itself: what exactly don’t you know, and is there anything you can do about it?
The aim is to stay involved in your life while the answer is missing, without asking yourself to feel calm about it all the time.
Before you tell yourself to let go
Experimental psychologist Jessica Alquist distinguishes between two kinds of uncertainty in Psyche: an outcome that hasn’t been determined and one that has been determined but remains unknown to you. An admissions committee might still be considering applications, or it might have made its choices without sending the letters. Both leave you waiting, but only the first leaves the decision open.
That distinction matters, although an unfinished decision doesn’t automatically give you influence over it. There may be an interview to prepare for or a document to submit; equally, you may have done everything required. The question is whether another action would contribute anything.
What if we want to see that boundary more clearly, through a game we are all familiar with? Roulette makes the line between choosing and waiting easy to understand. For people who play roulette games for real money, selecting a bet is something they can control; making the result match it isn’t. On a physical wheel, the ball may still be circling after betting closes, leaving a brief interval in which the outcome is unresolved, but the player’s decisions are finished. Watching more intently doesn’t steer the ball, however absorbing those seconds become. The useful distinction here is between caring about a result and having influence over it. Those feelings can seem inseparable while you’re waiting, even though wanting something to happen gives you no additional say in what happens next.
Roulette is also useful from another angle: it reminds us that the waiting can be pleasurable, even desirable, when you’re excited about the result. There is the thrill of the chase, the anticipation of the unknown – aspects that draw players to the table again and again. Waiting is something we deliberately seek out in some contexts.
Back in everyday life, the distinction between caring about the result and being able to affect it can be harder to spot, and the pleasure harder to find. Revising an application before submitting it can change what someone reads; rehearsing the interview after it has happened cannot change what you said. It may help to ask what your next action would actually accomplish.
When the answer already exists
Suppose the committee has decided and the announcement is due tomorrow. You still want to know, and there is nothing strange about that. But today’s repeated checking cannot bring forward a message nobody has sent.
This is where a small, specific agreement with yourself can help: check after breakfast tomorrow, then decide what to do with the information. The point is to give checking a purpose and a time: both will increase your sense of control over the situation, without actually altering the outcome.
The spiritual practice lies in what you do during the interval. Sit quietly for a moment and notice how quickly your attention returns to the unanswered question. You might feel yourself composing another email or trying to read meaning into the silence.
You don’t have to finish those thoughts. Let the question remain unanswered while you return to making lunch, taking a walk, or listening to the person beside you. Patience can be that ordinary.
When there isn’t an answer to wait for
Some uncertainties won’t arrive in an envelope. Whether to move, what to make next, or how you want your days to feel may depend on experiences you haven’t had. Treating these questions like delayed announcements can leave you waiting indefinitely.
It helps to think of them as open-ended questions, a practical extension of Alquist’s distinction, rather than a third category from her research. There may be several workable answers, and your preferences may change as you learn. You can give yourself something smaller to investigate.
Before deciding whether to move, spend an ordinary weekday in the place you’re considering. Before committing to a creative direction, make one small piece and see what interests you enough to continue. Neither experiment settles your future, but each gives you something concrete to consider beyond another imagined outcome.
Leave room to change your mind
In Psychology Today, Lybi Ma explores the difficulty of living with ambiguity. She describes research in which people with a stronger need for closure felt less competent and experienced more negative emotions during tasks that called for multiple possible solutions. She also suggests writing down what’s on your mind without editing it or trying to make it perfect.
That offers a simple way into this practice. Write the question you’ve been carrying, followed by what you know, what you’re assuming, and what you could find out. Leave space for something you haven’t considered.
If prayer or quiet reflection is part of your life, bring the unfinished question there too. You can speak honestly about what you hope for without turning that hope into a prediction. “I don’t know yet” can be a complete thought.
Some days, the question will keep interrupting you. You can notice it again, check whether anything has changed, and return to what you were doing. The answer may still be missing when evening comes, but the day needn’t have passed entirely in waiting.
Featured image courtesy of pexels.com
