1: Our brains are uncomfortable with the in-betweens.
“Imagine, for a moment, that we are traveling alone on a long-leg airline flight with no onboard Wi-Fi,” Anne-Laure Le Cunff writes in Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.
“There we are at 30,000 feet, suspended in the sky, transitioning from one place to another, neither here nor there,” she writes. “The places and people who normally define and control our daily lives are miles away. We don’t know exactly what will happen after we land, but there’s no way to rush to our destination to find out.”
How do we respond?
One option is discomfort, fear, and maybe even helplessness. “The fact is, we’re hurtling along at 30,000 feet in a tin can with someone else at the helm,” Anne-Laure observes. We “knock back alcohol to dull our fears or try to sleep away our anxiety. We check out to the greatest degree possible and pray to a higher power that the pilot manages to land the plane.”
But what if, instead, we decide to delight in the situation? What if we lean into our curiosity?
“Removed from our everyday, we find ourselves relaxing—yes, even in that uncomfortable seat,” she notes. “In this strange space, we feel an invigorating sense of possibility. We might crack a book we’ve been curious about but had no time for. Watch a movie that friends would be surprised to see us enjoy. Strike up a conversation with a stranger. Maybe we write in our journal, reflecting on what’s passed and mulling over what’s to come. Freed from our usual duties, released from the constraints of our day-to-day identities, we find the mental space to do something a little bit different.”
2: This mindset embraces the possibility of liminal space—”an in-between territory where the old rules governing our choices no longer apply,” she writes.
“Life is full of these moments, and the degree to which we learn to reap their lessons is the degree to which we grow and improve our lives.”
What gets in the way of thinking this way? Immediately labeling situations as good or bad. This tendency is “an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect us from unknown risks,” Anne-Laure explains. “Safe or not? Friend or foe? Secret passage or dead end?”
Our default state is one of being on guard.
“Just like a sentry on high alert, the brain prepares for potential threats,” she notes. “Uncertainty becomes fuel for anxiety. In fact, uncertainty has been found to cause more stress than inevitable pain. When we don’t know what’s coming, we overthink every possibility and we conjure worst-case scenarios.”
Which is why we often default to option one: Uneasiness, or even panic.
“When confronted with a stressful experience,” Anne-Laure explains, “our first instinct is to remove the stressor. And when we cannot eliminate the source of stress, we urgently seek activities that restore our sense of control—anything to compensate for our helplessness.”
We often fall into one of three defensive traps:
- “Cynicism: Doom-scrolling, passing up opportunities, poking fun at earnest people. . . Why suffer when we can just survive?
- “Escapism: Retail therapy, binge watching, dream planning. . . [We] break free from the burden of our responsibilities, an idealized place to get away from the uncertainty of our lives.
- “Perfectionism: Self-coercion, information hoarding, toxic productivity. We treat ourselves the way the stepmother treats Cinderella—’ from morning until evening, she had to perform difficult work, rising early, carrying water, making the fire, cooking and washing’–with no rest or time for ourselves.”
All of these reactions kill our curiosity and block out opportunities to learn and grow—the zest of life, what makes it exciting.
3: We can, however, fight against these tendencies. We can choose to explore the possibilities of this in-between space.
As Amelia Earhart once observed: “The most difficult thing is the decision to act.”
We can decide to take action. “Though we may not have all the information at hand,” Anne-Laure notes, “we can choose movement instead of stagnation, exploration instead of paralysis. And when we do, the sky is just the beginning.”
We embrace what she calls the experimental mindset.
The more we “flex our curiosity muscles, the more uncertainty transforms from something to escape to somewhere to explore,” she writes. We switch “from defensive to proactive. Instead of being passive passengers along for the ride, we can explore possibilities within the uncertainty. Not knowing the destination sparks our imagination. Freed from the need to control the outcome, we can experiment and play.”
We reject linear goals that lead to a defined destination. “Life rarely follows such rigid and predictable patterns,” Anne-Laure writes.
“Experiments are built for the in-betweens; they propel us forward even without a fixed destination, in constant conversation with our inner self and the outer world. By having the courage to leave the shore, we trade the illusion of control for the possibility of discovery. Rather than resisting uncertainty, we befriend it.”
We kindle our curiosity and imagine new possibilities.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: How can I lean into uncertainty and curiosity instead of fear and control in the in-between moments of life?
Action: Practice embracing liminal spaces this week by trying one new activity or mindset that sparks curiosity rather than anxiety.
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