in a life that demands certainty, i choose to remain unfinished

reframing uncertainty not as the absence of something, but as the presence of possibility

I remember the first time someone asked me what my five-year plan was like it was yesterday. I remember how my heart dropped to my stomach—not because I didn't have one, even though I didn't, but because I realized I was supposed to. I was supposed to know, with crystal clarity, exactly where I'd be living, what I'd be doing, who I'd be becoming half a decade from that very moment. And the fact that I could barely plan five weeks ahead felt like a personal failing of catastrophic proportions.

Completion is the highest priority in our society. Graduation ceremonies, relationship milestones, career achievements—all these neat little markers that suggest life is a series of boxes to be checked, levels to be cleared, final forms to be reached. We celebrate people who "have it all figured out" and quietly shame those who admit they're still wondering what they want to be when they grow up.

But this fascination with completion is not just unrealistic. It's violence against the self. It's taking the most tender parts of who you are—the parts that wonder and doubt and dream and change—and demanding they perform certainty they don't feel.

I know this violence intimately. I have spent so much of my life trying to become a final draft of myself. Trying to settle into a definitive answer to the question "Who are you?" as if identity were a multiple-choice test with only one correct response. I have twisted myself into shapes that felt foreign, adopted certainties I didn't actually feel, presented versions of myself that were polished and complete and utterly, devastatingly false.

I have pretended to know what I wanted when I was drowning in confusion. I have smiled and nodded when people praised my "proactive mindset" and “clarity regarding my future” while inside my mind was spinning and scared, unsure of how long I could keep up the facade.

I have lied about my ambitions because saying "I'm not sure yet" felt like admitting weakness. I have pretended to be passionate about things I was merely curious about, because curiosity without commitment apparently isn't valid in a world that demands you choose your lane and stay in it. I have felt so often that there is something fundamentally wrong with me due to my inability to choose one thing and stick with it.

However, what I’ve noticed is the people who seem the most certain are often the most afraid. In my opinion, certainty is not confidence, although it may appear as such—it's rigidity. Certainty is the armor we wear when we are too scared to admit we don’t have all of the answers. It's the wall we build around ourselves to keep out the messy, uncomfortable, essential work of actually living.

Because living is inherently uncertain. It's full of plot twists and detours and moments that change everything you thought you knew about what you wanted. It's full of discoveries about yourself that don't fit neatly into the boxes you've been trying to squeeze into.

So, I am choosing to remain unfinished.

Not because I've given up, but because I've finally understood that completion is a myth sold to us by people who profit from our dissatisfaction with where we are. Growth doesn't have an endpoint. Evolution never stops, never reaches a final form, never looks around and says, "Okay, we're done here." The moment you decide you're done becoming is the moment you begin the slow work of dying while still breathing.

I am choosing to remain unfinished because finished things are dead things. Finished paintings gather dust. Finished books sit silent on shelves. Finished people stop asking questions, stop changing their minds, stop believing that there’s more.

But unfinished things? Unfinished things are alive. They breathe. They surprise you. They contain possibilities that haven't revealed themselves yet.

I want to be unfinished like a garden that blooms differently each season, like a work in progress desire path on a college campus, like a song that sounds different depending on who's listening and when and why.

I want to be unfinished enough to change my mind without calling it failure. To start over without calling it giving up. To not know something without calling it ignorance.

I want to be unfinished enough to say, "I thought I wanted this, but it turns out I was wrong" without having to justify my earlier certainty or apologize for my current confusion.

Maybe the strongest thing you can do is refuse to perform certainty you don’t feel. Refuse to pretend you've arrived when you're still traveling. Refuse to close the door on becoming just because the world is uncomfortable with your openness.

Because here's the truth they don't want you to know: you are not supposed to be finished. You are not supposed to have it all figured out. You are not supposed to fit into a single, simple story about who you are and what you want.

You are supposed to be complex, contradictory, ever-changing. You are supposed to be multifaceted, expand your perspective, hold space for different dreams at different times.

You are supposed to be unfinished, not because you're broken,
but because you're alive.

And being alive means being in process. It means waking up different than you were yesterday. It means following paths that lead to dead ends and calling them adventures, not failures.

I am learning to find peace in the spaces between answers. To rest in the not-knowing without rushing toward false clarity. To reframe my mind into remembering that uncertainty is not the absence of commitment—it's the presence of possibility.

I am reminding myself that saying "I don't know" is not a confession of failure but instead an invitation to probe, to learn something new. That acknowledging I have things I’ve yet to figure out is not a sign of immaturity or laziness, it's simply evidence of a life still being lived.

You are not broken because you don't have it all figured out! You are exactly as you should be: unfinished, uncertain, & beautifully, persistently alive.