On a recent family call, my son said, “I didn’t have that on my Bingo card for 2023.” We laughed at his use of this old phrase and then I said that it could be something you could say about life in general.
Many things in life happen by chance. If you had told me when I was a young girl, growing up in Canada, that I would live in the United States for twenty-five years, I wouldn’t have believed you. By chance, I was born in a small city in Ontario, Canada. Our family moved to another city when I was in high school and my parents divorced a year later. After graduation from University, a friend and I drove across the country and we both got jobs in Vancouver, British Columbia. My friend returned home six months later for a boy and I left soon after because my Mom’s cancer had returned. I moved in temporarily with my Dad, who had relocated to Toronto. On the first day of my new job, I met my future husband. We married two years later, and five years after that, with a new child in tow, we moved to the U.S. when he was offered a transfer.
Of course, each of these decisions was freely made, yet there were chance events that led up to each of them. When I was in Vancouver and learned of my mother’s cancer, I made the easy choice to return home. I had no attachments there, I could live with my Dad, and I knew I could find other work easily. There were other choices I could have made that would have been fine. I could have stayed and supported my Mom from afar, going home as necessary. As it turned out, her cancer went into remission again, and she lived another five years. I’m glad I came home but I often think about the fact that my life would have been entirely different, not necessarily better, if I had stayed.
So it goes for every decision, every choice. It’s a lot like throwing dice, because you really don’t know what will happen next or what the outcome will be over the long term. We think we’re in control of our day to day lives, yet every single day our lives are touched by chance. We learn something new, depending on what we read or hear. Perhaps we run into an old friend unexpectedly or get into a fender bender on our way to work. We’re forced to take a detour and discover a great bakery we never knew about.
According to the dictionary, chance is “fortuitous or accidental, a possibility.” That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a sequence of events behind the chance event; it’s just that they weren’t necessarily visible to you.
There’s an element of luck to chance – being in the right place at the right time, or vice versa. Often the best things in life come from chance encounters. Your car breaks down on the highway and someone stops to help, who just turns out to be the love of your life. You take a wrong turn on a path and discover a beautiful vista. You win the lottery!
Chance events are not always about being lucky. We can experience a tragedy by chance which changes the course of our life. These chance events are out of our control so all we can do is respond to them in the best way we can. It’s what we do with them that makes all the difference.
The point of this essay is to realize the large role chance plays in our lives and then how to live with the uncertainty, to let go of expectations, invite chance in and then improvise.
Living with Uncertainty
“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.” ~ Margaret Drabble
This quote is paradoxical. I know I don’t like uncertainty, yet I also want to experience everything as possible. Ellen Langer is a mindfulness researcher and painter, who wrote a fascinating book on creativity called On Being an Artist: Reinventing yourself through Mindful Creativity. In it, she speaks about the value of uncertainty as part of the creative process. Below are some of her thoughts on this topic, paraphrased.
Every day there are choices to make. We’re constantly selecting, moving towards what we like or away from what we don’t. Every choice we make affects every other choice to come. There is no such thing as the one “right” decision or choice because the outcome is never pre-determined. So, there’s no need to become paralyzed by not knowing what decision to make. Langer says to just make the one that feels best at the time and then adjust as necessary.
We can grow by learning how to respond to our environment in a truly connected and authentic way, and expressing that connection through our work and actions. Our purpose in life is not to bring about an outcome, but to bring about ourselves. When we focus on being true to ourselves, the outcomes will follow. I really like that reframe.
Letting Go of Expectations
“What’s astonishing is the gulf between what we expect to find and what we find when we actually look.” ~ Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
One of my Mom’s favorite sayings was that “expectations will kill you every time.” Expectations arise from the mind and often don’t reflect reality. They also limit possibilities. Her point was that we’ll often end up disappointed if we have plans or expectations and they don’t pan out.
No matter how much we plan or set goals, disruptions will get in the way, welcomed or not. Small, daily annoyances and disruptions cause much of our stress, yet these things are often out of our control. Langer provides another reframe in that she says we do have control over our psychological experience of these disruptions. This is what it means to work with what is at hand.
As part of my exploration of what it means to truly see reality as it is, I’ve had to learn how labels, judgments, opinions, and expectations obstruct reality and limit possibilities. Part of my contemplative practice is to let go of expectations, desired outcomes, opinions, and even plans and see what I’m missing.
What happens when you let go of your destination, your to-do list, your expectations, and just enjoy a moment? Or, do what you set out to do but let go of the outcome. Be open to surprise. Notice when.you have expectations and practice letting them go. Actively notice new things in your familiar world with familiar people. What do you discover?
Working with Chance
‘Much of what gives one’s life meaning stems from accidents, interruptions, and serendipitous encounters: the “off time” that a mechanistic view of experience seeks to eliminate.” ~ Jenny Odell, How to do Nothing
What do we do with these “accidents, interruptions, and serendipitous chance encounters” that change our days for better or worse? We can invite them in. That is exactly what musician and artist John Cage did in his life and work. He called it “chance operations.”
In her book about Cage, Where the Heart Beats, author Kay Larson describes how these operations could be as simple as rolling dice or consulting the I Ching. His philosophy was to dance with chance, to give his will, his wants, his desired outcome, a break and let chance make a decision.
Cage is most known for his unusual musical composition 4’33” – where the “composition” consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. The song is created brand new each time it’s performed, composed of the ambient sounds in the room and the listening ears of the audience. This may seem silly at first, but it’s actually profound, the very definition of creation – something new comes into existence by bringing disparate elements together in a new way.
By using chance operations, Cage believed he could destroy his narrative, his particular point of view. It’s not that his point of view wasn’t worthy; it’s just that he knew there were many other points of view he may not have considered. It was a way of freeing himself from his ego, desires, likes or dislikes, and opening up to new possibilities. Chance is a way of letting things be as they are without imposing our own judgments on them.
“Most people don’t know that I use Chance as a discipline – they think I use it as a way of giving up making choices. But my choices consist in choosing what questions to ask.” ~ John Cage, Where the Heart Beats
I often describe contemplative photography as a chance encounter. It’s not me that “makes” a picture. Instead, I’m open to what I discover along the way. I have an encounter, there is a relationship, and then I attempt to photograph that relationship. It’s about being receptive to what is offered at the moment. The image at the top of this post is an example. I was walking in my town and saw this scene reflected on the side of a parked car. The light at that particular moment and the location of the car together created the image. I just happened upon it, an image waiting to be seen. Quite often, my best photographs come by chance.
Sand serves as a metaphor for this idea. Whenever I’m at a beach, I’m mesmerized by the random designs in the sand, all created by chance. Ephemeral beauty. Our lives are like that sand, composed in each moment by deliberate actions, but constantly changing and ultimately decided by chance or improvisation.
What would happen if we took our own choices out of the equation once in a while? John Cage said, “Begin with an intention, and open it up to the unpredictable.” Ask yourself “How else can I look at this?” or “What other choice could I make?” Adjust and adapt as you go. Learn how to improvise.
Learning to Improvise
Author and conductor Stephen Nachmanovitch is a self-described improviser and a strong believer in play as a component of creativity. He sees possibilities everywhere. In his book, The Art of Is, Nachmanovitch says that life is like musical improvisation, an ongoing dance with culture, community, and environment.
“Improvising means coming prepared, but not being attached to the preparation. Everything flows into the creative act in progress. Come prepared, but be willing to accept interruptions and invitations. Trust that the product of your preparation is not your papers and plans, but yourself.” ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch, The Art of Is
One of the most important messages I received from this book is that the secret of improvising is being able to talk (play, express) and listen at the same time. When you think of improvisational music, this is what’s happening. The musicians are playing and at the same time listening and responding to the other musicians in real time. Improv comedy works the same way.
The ability to listen deeply is key to being a good improviser. You need to listen to what’s happening to know what you should do next. An improviser sees life as dynamic, always changing and evolving. Each moment is fresh and new, requiring a new response. To make decisions in the moment requires what he calls an “evenly-hovering attention,” taking everything in without judgment. Letting the experience unfold is critical, especially for something new to emerge.
I hope that I can live an improvised life, open to whatever twists and turns arise. Below are some practices I’ve used to help me let go of expectations and work with chance.
Practices
Choiceless Awareness
This is a term that was popularized in the mid-20th century by the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. It’s considered to be “a state of unpremeditated, complete awareness of the present without preference, effort, or compulsion.” (Wikipedia)
Choiceless awareness is a state of being that is pre-choice, pre-thought. It’s also called the perceptual space, and is often unconscious. There’s no will involved, it's simply letting go of choice - observing and seeing what’s there before your mind tries to make sense of anything. You might have to make a choice eventually but experiencing this choiceless space can be quite freeing and enlivening.
Set a timer as a reminder or just take random pauses throughout your day. Slowly scan your environment, noting everything without fixating on anything particular. Then, scan your body and note how you feel - warm or cold, comfortable or not, aches or pains, without trying to change anything. Then, let it all go and continue what you were doing before you took the pause.
Here’s a practice for a walk. Do the practice above before you begin your walk. Begin walking and count to 10. Stop and scan. Note how the details have changed slightly. Repeat every 10 steps. If you’d like, you can take a photograph of what’s right in front of you at each stop. This way you can visually see later how awareness changes in each moment.
The purpose of these exercises is to take your selective predilections out of the equation and to see what you might normally miss. The constraint of every 10 seconds means that you see what’s there in that moment. This is the choiceless part. How does it feel to move through your day with this kind of choiceless awareness?
Other Ways to Invite Chance In
*When you walk, be open to whatever you discover. Take a different route. Walk at a different time of day. Notice accidental art. Let your body make choices about where you’ll go rather than your mind. Notice when your mind is attracted or repulsed.
**Use chance to guide you in a decision – roll the dice, pull a tarot card, use the I Ching. Or, open a random book to a random page and see what it has to say to you. Or, go to the library and walk to a random shelf and pull a random book off the wall. Take it out and read it.
*Go on an artist date (coined by Julia Cameron), especially to some place you haven’t been before. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to see an art exhibit only to find another exhibit in the same place that I like even better.
*Create a chance event for someone else. Stop in or call or send a note to a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. Write out a poem or quote and leave it somewhere for someone else to find. Do a random act of kindness for a stranger.
*Keep a daily chance diary so that you can see how chance is a part of your everyday life in big ways and small. Many chance events are satisfying just because they’re unexpected. We tend to remember what we consider negative experiences more than the positive ones. Writing down everything is a way to also notice when things go our way. I think you’ll be very surprised at the role chance plays in your life.
Resources
The Guest House, a fabulous poem by Rumi on being open to chance.
Article: Simone de Beauvoir on how Chance and Choice Converge to make us who we are via Brain Pickings
Learn more about John Cage - website, the book Where the Heart Beats, the composition 4’33 on YouTube
Kim, I deeply enjoyed this. As always, you bring together such solid, simple ideas for seeing the world anew. Thank you for the clear thinking and gathering of resources!