“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans” – Woody Allen 

We were planning on travelling to Japan starting mid-August for a month or two. We had a well-established itinerary and flight/accommodation all booked when we thought that our medical needs had been all taken care of. 

Then first, Håkan acquired a new medical issue that caused us to postpone the trip and eventually cancel it. Once we had clarity around his condition, I found myself in another medical situation. But this blog isn’t really about the specific details of our health conditions. It is about certainty or lack thereof in our lives. 

I like certainty. Who doesn’t? As such, I really dislike uncertainty in our lives—and yes, who doesn’t? When you have done a biopsy for cancer and are waiting for the result, there is uncertainty. I remember when I was in my teens, I had no idea what I would become in life. This uncertainty felt overwhelming. Even more challenging was watching my single mom worry about whether she would make enough money each day to feed her kids and be able to educate them. What she had in abundance was her sheer will to educate her kids and ensure their success in life. What she lacked was certainty—frightening indeed. 

Håkan and I now have four different dates of our departure depending on the medical exam results. I have gone to our flight booking site about 20 times just in the past few weeks. 

Sitting with this pattern—the waiting, the multiple timelines—I’ve started to wonder if I’ve been having the wrong relationship with uncertainty. We could resist, resent and get frustrated. Instead, what if we accept uncertainty as a constant in our lives? It’s a natural force. Like water flowing downward, it’s natural and frivolous to resist. We can respond to it, adapt around it, learn from it. 

Those 20-plus visits to the booking site aren’t really about flights. Or maybe I’m slightly obsessed—that’s true too. Still, I realize this could be our evolutionary coping mechanism around uncertainty. I’m staying connected to what’s in my control while I can’t control the timing. Each visit is a small ritual, a way of keeping hope alive without demanding guarantees. It’s not rational, certainly not, but it feels profoundly human—this need to tend our dreams even when we can’t be sure they’ll unfold as imagined. 

My mother understood this intuitively. Every morning brought the same question: would she be able to sell enough goods that day to put food on the table? She could have been paralyzed by not knowing. Instead, she developed her own rhythm with uncertainty. She planned her route, prepared her goods, and resolved to sell more. Not because she could guarantee success, but because choosing action over worry was how she stayed alive to possibility. 

Even my teenage quest about life direction was its own form of dancing with uncertainty. I was learning to live with not knowing while still making choices as best as I could, given the resources at the time. Every conversation about the future, every small decision, was practice in moving forward without a complete map. 

Planning and Uncertainty Can Coexist 

Perhaps this is what we miss when we frame uncertainty as the enemy of our plans. We spend so much energy trying to eliminate it that we forget we’re already in a relationship with it. The question isn’t how to avoid uncertainty—it’s how to engage with it more gracefully, more consciously. 

Some of us engage by planning thoroughly, like our Japan trip preparation. The planning itself becomes a way of honouring both our hopes and our humility about what we can’t control. Strategic planning can be one approach to engaging with uncertainty while still working toward our goals. Others engage by staying fluid and responsive. ‘See what happens.’ 

The grace isn’t in having the perfect response to uncertainty. It’s in recognizing that it is a natural constant in our lives—always there. Once we acknowledge this, we can embrace it and build a more conscious relationship with it. 

Maybe uncertainty isn’t a disruptor of our plans. Maybe it’s the music we dance to.