Living in an uncertain world : Camargue

Uncertainty… it’s a word that’s being played out a lot at the moment. As we continue to navigate our way through the Covid-19 pandemic, uncertainty permeates most aspects of our daily lives.

Living in the shadow of Covid-19, things we thought were fairly certain and fixed in our lives – going to work, picking up the kids from school, heading to the gym, catching up with friends in the pub – are all uncertain, leaving us wondering will the old normality ever return.

Yet as human beings, we crave security and shy away from ambiguity, we organise, we plan, we schedule. We want a sense of control over our lives.

While we may not wish to acknowledge it, uncertainty is a natural and unavoidable part of life. Very little about our lives is constant, and while we have control over many things, we can’t control everything that happens to us. As the pandemic has shown, life can change quickly and unpredictably.

While no one would have wanted a global pandemic to sharpen the focus on ways to embrace uncertainty, perhaps a silver lining can be a blueprint of strategies to help us learn from, communicate, and embrace our new frontier of ever-present change.

So how do we do this? Critically, we need to acknowledge its presence and accept that there will always be aspects of life we simply have no control over. What we do have control over however, is how we respond, our reaction to this constant state of flux.

It is at times of uncertainty that what we say and how we say it becomes critical. Now is not the time to be on the back foot – which is difficult when timescales are unpredictable. We need open, honest dialogue with those around us, we need to acknowledge and communicate the ambiguity we all feel and embrace what lies ahead.

During the pandemic communication has become our bridge – connecting us to family, friends, and colleagues. Connecting us to people in a way that has been so vital at a time when we’re all facing unpredictable and challenging times and huge restrictions on how we interact with those around us.

Communicating during these unprecedented times is undoubtedly challenging but perhaps this new era can help us all have more open discussions around uncertainty.