you don’t have to know

We have lots of friends in transition right now. Fewer, perhaps, than we did this summer, when Grace and Kelsey moved into new houses and Jake and Sarah got married and Bethany, Nate and Abi, and J and I moved across the country. But, since Boston is such an academic center, we’ve met lots of people who’ve come here for school, which of course means they eventually finish and start pursuing the next step.

My friend Beth, who just defended her dissertation, is searching for work – possibilities at this point include universities in several different states. Like me, she has a tendency to what-if every scenario to death, analyzing each job/location in terms of her work, her husband’s work, church communities, climate, distance from parents and in-laws, possible schools/youth groups for their (future) children, and on and on it goes. (You do this too, right? I know Beth and I aren’t the only ones who tend to be slightly neurotic regarding our unknown futures.)

Anyway, we were talking the other night, and I finally told her what my friends told me just before we moved to Boston: Wherever you go, you don’t have to stay there forever. You may spend two years, or five or ten years, someplace and love it – or you may hate it, or simply decide to move on. And that’s okay. Sometimes it’s enough to just take the adventure that’s offered right now, knowing it doesn’t have to be permanent.

I thought back to my last semester of college, when I didn’t know what I planned to do, where I was going to live, how I was going to support myself, and was getting very tired of saying “I don’t know” to everyone and their dog. My friend Tracy, who teaches history at ACU, smiled when I repeated my refrain to her, and said simply, “You don’t have to know.”

I didn’t believe her then, of course. I thought I had to have it all figured out by May (this was in March or April), and of course, in a stroke of cosmic irony, my life didn’t really fall into place until August. But what Tracy meant was: it will all work out. Keep searching; take the next step and the next; move into your sister’s house for the summer, keep working at your student job, keep looking for the next thing; and it will find you.

As it turns out, Tracy was right, and she’s been right several times over, when I didn’t know what the next job/house/major life decision looked like. The philosophy of simply taking the step you can see in front of you, and waiting and searching for the next thing, has been true for me. And I think it will be true for Beth too.

I’m not saying she (or anyone) shouldn’t search, apply, do research, interview, seek advice, pray or think deeply about major life decisions. But I am saying it’s enormously freeing when you realize: I don’t have to know what the rest of my life will look like. I just have to take the next step, whatever that is. I just have to live today.