The concept of certainty often taxes my grey matter.

Certainty challenges change.  When searching for certainty, I look for stability, assurance, guarantees.

Humans can’t help looking for consistency, for security.  It is as natural as breathing.

So when change happens we feel nervous, uncertain.  We search for patterns and behaviours that help us feel secure.  Sometimes we do this consciously, often it’s sub conscious or “other conscious”  – a new term I was introduced to last week.

In terms of change at work, we often don’t like it but in my experience, there are several options:

1. I don’t like this but I’m interested to see/hear what will happen next.

2. I don’t like this, I’m not going to stay.

3. I don’t like this but I have little option but to put up with it.

4. I don’t like this so I’m going to oppose it all the way and try to stop it from happening.

5. I don’t like this so I’m going to show them an alternative way.

Rarely have I experienced someone rushing towards me, arms outstretched in greeting, yelling, ” Hurrah,  we’re going to change”!!!

Working with change and uncertainty is challenging because it affects our basic need of knowing we can provide for our families.

I think about this in terms of the Mothers in Aleppo.  The nurturors of the innocents, the oppressed and the oppressors.

These Mothers face uncertainty and change beyond imagining.  This, the oldest city in the world and dominated by its great citadel, was once a thriving, bustling city of souks and khans and stuffed full of extraordinary archeological treasure and culture; now it lies in ruins in the dust. Where allowing your children to go and play, as children the world over all want to do, may mean you never see them again.   I listen to a radio report from Krishnan Guru-Murthy,  who witnesses the immediate aftermath of an airstrike into an already shelled building where three brothers are playing.  Two brothers suffering from shock, stand mute  while their Mother rushes in and picks up her third son, cradling his still warm life form close to her. She begins to rock and wail, crying “he is not going for burial today”.  “He is not going for burial today”.  The men on the scene try to encourage her to let him go.  Mohammed, who is forever seven, Mohammed who is forever loved, Mohammed who moments ago was playing with his brothers, lies dead in her arms.

The siege of Aleppo means these Mothers don’t know from day to day, hours to hour, if their children will survive.  Will they die from a shell strike from somewhere and someone unknown, or from a sniper’s bullet from a fighter hiding out in this atrocity of a city? Perhaps they will go more slowly, in a hospital which has no drugs or supplies to stop their piercing pain, their blood from flowing, their screams of agony.  Or maybe death will come from malnutrition as no food has been allowed to get into the city for months and months.  These Mothers, like all Mothers the world over, fret about the basics. “Is my child safe and secure?”  “Does my child have food and water to survive?”  “Can I provide for my child?”  As any psychologist will tell you, without these basics, what we know, or think we know, counts for nothing.  We are reduced to our elemental selves.  Humanity and human are two different concepts when our backs are so far to the wall we are leaving our shadows imprinted in the brickwork.

A different radio report from Aleppo,  responding to the question of “what do you want to be when you are older?”, garners the response “I don’t plan; I don’t think I will survive”.  She is twelve.

So, in this context, I refuse to allow my body and mind to be bowed by any continued uncertainty over my health.  I now have support at work, and my tribe and husband continue to be amazing.  After meeting the consultant last week, and with a date for my next operation now set, we hit the internet and phone, frenetically  pack and board the plane.

Yes, I am living with a level of uncertainty.  But my basics and much, much more are being met and often exceeded.

So I suggest we all live life to the best of our ability. Let’s cherish the moments of calm and knowing. And consider those who have challenges greater than our own.