We spend so much of our lives trying to control what we can, yet in the end, so much slips through our fingers like sand. Take the body, for example. It’s our vessel, our constant companion, yet it betrays us in subtle ways – aches, twitches, little signs that something might be wrong, or worse, that something unseen lurks beneath. How strange it is that we fear the invisible most of all: viruses, diseases, the unknown decay. It’s almost a cruel irony that the very thing we live inside can become a prison, a battleground where our mind wars with our fears. But maybe that fear is a form of control, a way to stave off the chaos, even if only for a moment.
And yet, what does control mean in the grander scheme? Are we not just passengers on a train hurtling forward, with stops we never chose and companions we never wanted? The mind tries to map the journey, to name the places, to find meaning in the randomness. History itself is a vast archive of human attempts to impose order on the chaos – empires rise and fall, stories get told and retold, but beneath it all lies the same mystery: Why is there something rather than nothing? Why am I here, reading these words, thinking these thoughts, instead of somewhere else or nowhere at all?
Perhaps the search for meaning is both the curse and the gift of consciousness. To be aware of time passing, to know that one day this all will end, creates a pressure unlike any other. It can crush us under the weight of endless possibility and the terror of finality. Yet it also inspires us to write, to teach, to build connections, even if they’re fragile and fleeting. We reach out to history, to stories, to others – because in doing so, we defy the silence.
But maybe defiance is not enough. Maybe we must learn to accept uncertainty – not as defeat, but as a space where true freedom resides. To live without the illusion of total control is terrifying, yes, but it is also liberating. To breathe into the unknown, to hold the fear without letting it consume us – that is the quiet courage we need.
Not knowing where we’ll stop, not knowing who we’ll become, only knowing that the journey itself is the answer we seek.