Fear of the unknown — an evening conversation
Last evening, my husband and I found ourselves in one of those conversations that starts simply and ends somewhere unexpected.
We were talking about life — our situation, the future, the things we don’t yet know. And somewhere in that conversation, fear of the unknown showed up. The kind that quietly takes over when the unknown feels too wide, too uncharted. Where the variables multiply in your mind faster than you can count them, and the future starts to feel like a threat rather than an open door.
I sat with it for a while. Not to fix it — you can’t fix fear with logic, at least not right away. But eventually I said something that has become an anchor for me over the years:
Come back to right now. Just right now.
Because the future doesn’t actually exist. That’s not a comfort — it’s a truth. The future is a projection, a story we tell ourselves, populated by variables we cannot possibly account for. It hasn’t happened yet. And the version of it we imagine when we’re afraid is almost never the version that actually arrives.
The future doesn’t exist
I have lived with fear of the unknown for years. Since I moved to Baja California Sur without a plan, without a guaranteed income, without knowing exactly how it would all work out — I have been navigating uncertainty as a daily practice.
It is not always comfortable. I won’t pretend it is. There are mornings when the weight of the unresolved presses down. Weeks when the questions feel louder than the answers.
But I have learned something in all of it: the fear of the future is almost always worse than the future itself. Because the future, when it finally arrives, comes one moment at a time. And in each of those moments, you find out what you’re made of. You find resources you didn’t know you had. You figure it out.
The fear of the unknown, though — it lives in a place that doesn’t exist yet. And it asks you to suffer there in advance.
Maktoub
My grandmother says maktoub the way other people say amen. After every story, every hardship, every unexpected turn of events — maktoub. It is written.
She also says alhamdulillah — a word used by Muslims around the world that translates literally as “praise and gratitude to God.” But its meaning goes deeper than translation. It is a declaration of fullness. Of enough. A reminder that what we have, right now, in this moment, is plenty — and worthy of gratitude.
Together, these two words hold an entire philosophy of life. Maktoub — trust what is unfolding. Alhamdulillah — be grateful for what already is.
She has lived a long life full of things that were hard and things that were beautiful, and she holds all of it with a kind of grace I find both foreign and deeply familiar. As if the acceptance of what is — what was always going to be — releases something. A tension. A resistance.
Maktoub doesn’t mean giving up. It doesn’t mean nothing matters or that our choices are irrelevant. It means — trust the force that is driving this life. Have faith that the chapter you’re in has a purpose, even if you can’t see the title yet.
Life contains suffering. Loss. Hardship. For everyone, without exception. We all live this. The fear of the unknown is universal. Maktoub — it is written. Not as punishment, but as part of the whole.
Alhamdulillah — and still, there is so much to be grateful for.
Is it written — or are we writing it?
I go back and forth on this. I think most honest people do.
Part of me leans into maktoub — into the idea that the broad strokes are already there, that there is something larger than us holding the shape of things. Another part of me thinks: you’re born, things happen, then you die. And in between, how you show up is everything.
Maybe both are true. Maybe the landscape is written, but we choose how we walk through it. Maybe fate and agency are not opposites but partners — one holding the structure, the other filling it with meaning.
What I do believe, fully, is this: the way we present ourselves in our lives has an influence on what happens in them. Not control — influence. We are not passive passengers. But we are also not the authors of everything. And learning to hold both of those truths at once is, I think, one of the quieter forms of wisdom.
The fear of the unknown dissolves a little when you stop trying to control the uncontrollable — and start focusing on what is actually yours to shape.
Come back to right now
When fear of the unknown shows up — and it does, for all of us — the most useful thing I know how to do is come back to the present moment.
Not the imagined future. Not the rewritten past. Right here. Right now. This breath. This room. This day.
And then ask: what can I actually do, today, with what I have?
That question cuts through so much noise. Because there is almost always something. It might be small — setting aside a little money, making one phone call, having one honest conversation. But small and consistent beats paralyzed and waiting every time.
I like systems for this. I like automating the things I can automate so that my energy goes toward the things that actually need my attention. A small automatic savings transfer. A regular morning practice. A weekly check-in with myself. These are not solutions to uncertainty — nothing is. But they are anchors. Ways of telling yourself: I am taking care of what I can take care of. The rest, I will meet when it arrives.
What brings me back
When my mind loops into fear of the unknown — and it does, I am human — there are things I reach for.
Dancing. The kind where you forget your name for a few minutes and your body just knows what to do.
Creating. Hands busy, mind quiet, something taking shape that wasn’t there before.
Diving. Underwater, where the noise of the surface world simply cannot follow.
Meditating. Sitting with what is, without trying to change it.
Writing. Journaling, blogging — putting words to the unnamed things until they become a little less heavy, a little more understood. There is something about articulating fear that takes some of its power away. It becomes a thing you are looking at rather than a thing that is swallowing you.
These are not escapes. They are returns — to myself, to the present, to the truth that right now, in this moment, I am okay.
A note for the ones who feel it too
If you are someone whose thoughts spiral into worst-case scenarios — you are not broken. You are human. Fear of the unknown is one of the oldest fears there is. It kept our ancestors alive.
But we are not running from predators anymore. We are trying to build lives. And the threat-detection system that was designed to protect us can, if we let it, convince us that the future is already lost before we’ve even arrived there.
It isn’t.
Some of the most beautiful chapters of your life won’t have a title until much later. You are probably in one right now — you just can’t see it yet.
Maktoub.
It is written. And it is still being written. And how you show up in it matters more than you know.