If memory serves, I have been in a canoe only three times in my life. One of them, the first experience, was a camping trip down an incredibly low Delaware river, where we snagged the boat on one rock after another and had to get out into the ankle deep river, lift the canoe over the rock and get back in again. Loads of fun. I climbed into a canoe again some years later for a beautiful and uneventful paddle through a swamp in Maine. I thought I had it down. That is until the final venture, a disaster, in Vermont. There we went around a bend and hit some swirling rapids which overturned the canoe and dumped us into the very cold Battenkill. The river carried the canoe away, upside down, as we followed after it, on foot in the water. Which explains why I kayak. Now we human beings seek to understand our experiences and find meaning in them. I have, therefore, come to the conclusion that being in a canoe symbolizes one of the core experiences of life: living with uncertainty.

From the ancient Greeks to the Buddha to quantum physicists, human beings have observed that life is change and change means, among other things, uncertainty. Heraclitus said that one cannot step into the same river twice. The water moves constantly. Buddha observed that impermanence characterizes life. Nothing sticks around without alteration, ebb and flow. Dylan Thomas wrote “Tim e held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.” Werner Heisenberg, in what is called the Uncertainty Principle, enunciated a degree of uncertainty in the accuracy of measuring simultaneously related aspects, such as the position and momentum of a particle, or the energy and the time needed to measure that energy, which means that an exact, certain picture of the sub-atomic world cannot be arrived at. Uncertainty permeates, not just human life, but the whole universe.

How do we live with that? The uncertainty in our personal lives in terms of future paths: material security of work and finances, emotional security of relationships, bodily security of health and strength, the spiritual security that allows us to be with it all without falling apart. And there’s more. The uncertainty that fills our society in this economic downturn, the uncertainty surrounding national security issues and current military engagements, the uncertainty regarding needed social changes to health care and the like. How can we be with it all? Take a breath.

Imagine yourself in a canoe moving down a river. The river is uncertainty; it is change. The river is deep, with powerful tides and currents. The river is wide and it curves and we cannot see what lies ahead, or even what lies on the other side. Sometimes a calm settles over the river, when its surface gleams and the sun warms us and the stillness fills us. Sometimes a blustery wind blows, relentlessly holding us in place as it pushes the white caps to crash over the sides of the boat, making us shiver with cold. The river is life. And life is uncertainty. How can we be with it all? Take a breath.

In the river we encounter rapids that catch us in their movements and rocks that stop us in our tracks. What are they? The pitfalls in the river are the ways we react to uncertainty. Many of us find ourselves filled with anxiety when uncertainty surrounds us, understandably so. We don’t know what will happen - uncertainty - and we feel as though we have no control. This reminds me of encountering rapids in a river. Have you ever ridden in rapids? Like the very uncertainty of life, rapids have power and they take us and bounce us around this way and that and sometimes they up end us. It takes some training and skill to maneuver a canoe through rapids.

One of the ways we cope with uncertainty and its companion, anxiety, is to re-assert our sense of control, albeit anxiously. I went on a camping trip with a man who grew up in extreme poverty and often did not have enough to eat. We all shared the cooking and food shopping and one morning, when the cereal ran low, this man started to count the corn flakes and divide them up between us. Seven cornflakes each.

Another way we try to maintain control and contain our anxiety in the face of uncertainty is to figure out what we did wrong that brought about the uncertainty. I think that a large part of "If only I had been a better spouse, friend, parent, child, worker, etc" is about control. It's easier to blame ourselves for a lack of competence in the canoe than think ourselves at the mercy of the rapids because the very blame means we believe we can do better, we can be a better “whatever” and therefore change things the next time around. This doesn't have to happen again if I'm a better “whatever,” if I don't do that, and so forth.

We respond to uncertainty with fear and anxiety because we want what we have, and/or who we’re with, not to change. We want to hold onto the familiar, the comfortable, whatever brings us a sense of security and we fear that uncertainty means future loss so we try to avoid that loss by controlling everything. Alas, we rarely succeed in our efforts to control uncertainty because uncertainty is bigger than we are. The canoe cannot control the rapids, it can only move through them. How it does that depends upon the skills of the paddlers. What are those skills? We’ll get there in a moment.

Our fears of loss cause us to shrink into our smaller selves. Choices seem more limited; we consider only our own interests. This is when we hit the rocks in the river of uncertainty and get stuck on them. We hold on to our loved ones too tightly, not letting them have room to breathe. As the Stephen Sondheim song goes, “Don’t slip away20and I won’t hold so tight.” Or we expect, even demand, that things be a certain way when they simply are not and we bang our heads against the brick wall of unreality. You’ve been dieting for three weeks and determine that you should have lost ten pounds by now. But you haven’t. So you beat yourself up about it, again and again. Or we set up ultimatums, either-or conditions, it’s my way or the highway. How often do we get our way in those situations? Or we fear that if we do this, that terrible thing will happen. So we don’t try this. The uncertainties of our lives and the fears surrounding them cause us to close doors. We sit in the canoe stuck against the rock. We want the rock to get out of our way but it doesn’t move and we can’t figure out how to get past it. We cannot seem to see that it’s possible sometimes to back up and go around it. Or get out of the boat and lift it over the rock.

    An autobiography in five short chapters


1. I walk, down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost... I am hopeless.

It isn’t my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.


2. I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I am in the same place.

But, it isn’t my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.


3. I walk 
down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in... it’s a habit.

My eyes are open

I know where I am.

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.


4. I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.


5. I walk down another street.               -Portia Nelson

I think a large struggle for all of us is how to live with uncertainty, keep the canoe afloat and moving and ourselves out of the water. Paddling a canoe through rapids and riffles and avoiding the rocks takes practice and some degree of skill. The good news is that we can each develop the skill. There are islands in the river of uncertainty. Islands where we can go to learn new ways of paddling and develop different methods for coping with uncertainty. On these islands we find friends, helpers, supports, and role models. These islands are communities, such as this one. In uncertain waters, community provides solid ground. Listening ears, sympathetic hearts, intelligent, kind and perceptive feedback, material help, maps, and directions. We see other people who dwell with uncertainty, some of it far greater than ours, and live gallantly. They teach us and inspire us. It’s not that the anxieties disappear, but rather that we discover resources to help us get through. Look around this room. These people, your community, is right here beside you.

Other people and communities not only provide some of those resources, they also help us uncover and use the resources within ourselves. Uncertainty can cause us to doubt our abilities to take care of ourselves and those we love. To doubt that we have anything worthy to contribute. To doubt that we make a difference. Our communities and friends and families can remind us that we have much to give; they can reflect back to us our own value. These islands are safe havens where we can renew our spirits and find the strength to go on with a greater degree of equanimity and confidence.

In the renewing that takes place on these islands our spirits find more of themselves. It’s not that the fears disappear, but rather that we discover other ways to view our uncertain situations. We don’t have to fight our fears and anxieties, or think we are somehow less because we have them. We have only to recognize them without letting them rule us. A student asked her opponent, Fear, how she could defeat him. Fear smiled and answered, you cannot defeat me but you will be free of me when you no longer automatically do what I say. When I’m afraid I want to run away and hide. I can do that; I surely have done that. Yet another way to be with this fear is to recognize it, to admit that I feel it and that I want to run away so that I won’t feel it anymore, but then to hold my ground, to remain present and see what happens. Sometimes20it’s wise to obey our fear; it can protect us from danger. Many times, though, our fears and anxieties are for the future and we would do well to give ourselves the choice of whether or not to follow them. There’s a freedom in that. As Pema Chodron says, “. . . we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.” (The Places That Scare You)

If we can choose flexibility within the uncertainties, in the losses brought about by change we might find new opportunities. New avenues to explore, new skills to learn, talents and interests we had relegated to the back burner. We might find courage to open our hearts rather than completely shut down. We might understand that we have many more options than we first thought. We might find ourselves able to let go of the security we think we needed so much. We might find that in those times when we feel the greatest uncertainty, generosity to others actually heals us and brings joy into our lives. Reaching out to someone else takes the focus off of ourselves. We still have something to give. We learn to become aware of the places where abundance dwells. All of this helps us navigate the places that scare us.

That said, we know this is not easy. It takes practice. I do believe, though, that many of us have done this at ti mes in our lives. We have anchored at safe harbors where we found the openness, flexibility, courage and generosity to face our fears and creatively meet the challenges of uncertainty. We have, with the help of others and the renewal and development of our own spirits, discovered the way to get our canoe through the rapids and off the rocks. May we remember those times and use them in these times.

Part of the answer is, of course, to learn to be in the present moment, which is all we really have anyway. Fear exaggerates the future, living in the present moment takes away the exaggeration because we see that we can do it, step by step. There’s a great freedom that accompanies living in the present moment. “A fresh attitude starts to happen when we look to see that yesterday was yesterday, and now it is gone; today is today and now it is new. It is like that -- every hour, every minute is changing. If we stop observing change, then we stop seeing everything as new.” (Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche) Life can be an adventure and we can approach it with curiosity, creativity, patience and courage. This becomes more possible when we can be present in the moment, even if we mange to do this for only one moment each day.

In a couple of months it will be ten years since I was diagnosed with cancer. It’s a pretty significant anniversary and I hasten to add, with gratitude, that I’m fine. Anyway, I had the tests and deci ded to go up to Maine, to Acadia National Park, for a vacation. I called in for the results and received the diagnosis at a pay phone in a Burger King on the Maine Turnpike. There I was, with my son, 500 miles from home. I made a choice to continue with the trip and you know what? I had one of the best vacations I have ever had. I was present with the wild beauty of the ocean and the rocks. I was present with our hikes in the mountains looking for stone bridges. I was present when Matthew and I played New York Monopoly. The very uncertainty that awaited gave me the wherewithal to be present in the moments. And it was intensely wonderful.

So I’m naming my canoe Present Moment and I’m going to get into the present moment again and paddle down the river of uncertainty. I know I’ll get stuck on the rocks of not wanting things to change, or fighting the reality of how things are. I know I’ll get caught in the currents of anxiety and my world will shrink. I realize I will attempt to control the river rather than finding ways to maneuver the canoe through the rapids. I will encounter all of this, over and over and I will become afraid. But I also know this. I will find plenty of islands in this big river and I will become courageous. Islands where I can access opportunities for help and support; islands where I can access my own imagination and sense of adventure. Islands that will allow me to replenish my faith in others, in myself and in life. And I will make of this a life jacket.

We are not alone. We are in this river together even if our experiences are particular. Uncertainty is the way of life but we do have the freedom to choose how we will be with it. May we exercise that freedom and learn to choose, not in fear, but with courage because when we do, we can appreciate life’s wonder more deeply and bear its sorrows more easily. In such a way we learn to accept, even trust, uncertainty. May it be so.