The Crumbling of Certainty

I recently found myself in a place of profound disillusionment.

None of it made sense. None of it was how I was promised it would be. My core beliefs were all lies, or so they felt. This reality I was living in, setting goals for and working my ass off in, was a house of cards. It was fake. Pure bullshit. Built on the fears of society.

Have you ever had the ground disappear beneath your feet? That's how it felt when everything I thought I knew came crashing down around me. The beliefs I'd built my life on, the goals I'd been working towards, the very fabric of my reality - all of it suddenly seemed like an elaborate illusion.

It's a terrifying place to be. When the foundation we've built our lives on starts to crumble, the natural instinct is to grab onto anything solid, to try to patch up the cracks and pretend everything's fine. I felt that urge acutely.

But what if, instead of trying to rebuild the same shaky structure, we saw this as an opportunity? An invitation to build something new, something truer to who we really are?

I could no longer sit back and take the lessons and explanations that filled my childhood at face value.

The liberation this epiphany brought with it was short lived. It meant taking responsibility for my own beliefs, for crafting my own understanding of the world. No more accepting hand-me-down truths or unexamined assumptions. It was time to question everything.

The process wasn't easy.

Being in my early 30s at the time, this was truly soul-rattling. Questioning the foundation that my entire life had been built upon was confusing. Frustrating. Mind-boggling.

In hindsight, this moment of crisis was the beginning of a new chapter. It was the first step on a path towards authenticity and self-discovery. It opened up possibilities I couldn't have imagined when I was living in the comfortable (if confining) structure of my old beliefs.

Now, years later, I've come to see that the crumbling of certainty wasn't a disaster - it was a gift. It gave me the chance to rebuild my worldview from the ground up.

And it leaves me wondering: what structures in my life might be due for demolition and what new possibilities might open up after they fall?

Embracing the beauty (and fear) of uncertainty…

*Italicized quotations are from Papercuts: The Art of Self Delusion