Certainty is the refuge of the fearful.
Each of us try to live in the balance of gratitude and desire. Being grateful does not mean you do not desire certain events or things, and desiring things does not mean that you are not grateful for what you have or what has already occurred.
The balance between the two is a careful dance, and sometimes that balance is over-ridden by a need that is desperately unbalanced. The greatest disruptor of balance that I have found is fear.
Fear can be our guide, our guardian and our protector, but when it overpowers us, then fear becomes our prosecutor, our punisher and our tormentor.
In my coaching, I have found that those who are the most fearful tend to crave certainty. This desperate desire for things to turn out the way they are expected or wanted is nothing more than a wish to avoid the potential pain that uncertainty could bring.
Those who crave certainty will often accept a painful certain now, rather than risk a potentially painful future, because the presence of hope brings with it the risk of disaster.
So they take refuge in certainty, even in misery, to avoid the pain that possibility brings.
A need for certainty can show itself in expectations that are unspoken, in a desire to always be right no matter the situation, and often in a refusal to listen to or consider another’s point of view.
Pitied be those who live in dogma, for they fear the possibility of a new frontier.
When you come across people who are desperate for certainty, I would ask you to look beyond their initial behavior, and try to go deeper to see what fear they are attempting to assuage.
Maybe it is the need to be right to avoid feeling inferior, or the need to be loved to avoid a sense of loneliness and despair.
Truthfully, they who need certainty are often those who desperately need a sense of themselves greater than the fears that they manifest. Theirs is an existence of unhappiness and unbalanced emotions that prevents them from finding wonder in the new, and joy in the possibility on their journey.
Certainty is their drug, their hope, and their prison.
Treat them with kindness, and invite them to step beyond the walls of their fears.
Welcome them into the light.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings