The Uncertainty Principle

Or: Why “the journey is the point” is more than just a poster quote

I’ve been thinking about uncertainty. Specifically, the Uncertainty Principle.

Quick refresher for those who didn’t spend their teens and twenties nerding out over quantum physics: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says that the more precisely you know one thing (say, the position of a particle), the less precisely you can know another related thing (like its momentum). It’s not a problem with our tools—it’s baked into reality. Fundamentally, we cannot completely know both the “where it is now” and the “where it’s going” of anything.

Including ourselves.

Which doesn’t seem to stop me from trying.

I look ahead a lot. It’s part of the job, I suppose. As a novelist, everything I do now is meant to lay groundwork for some hoped-for future. I’m writing books, building platforms, structuring my business, chasing dreams—and with every step, I’m looking for signs that the future I imagine is taking shape.

The thing is… the future is pure uncertainty.

That’s not just a poetic analogy. It’s reality. The future—my future—is something I can’t measure. I can’t control it. I can’t even know it. And the more I try, the more it slips through my fingers. What I can see, what I do know, is where I am right now. What I’m doing. How I’m living. Who I am.

All I can see, for sure, is the work right in front of me.

Sometimes, I overlook that. I fall into the trap of thinking that joy is waiting for me on the other side of some goal or milestone. On the other side of the Dream (capital “D”).

Finish the next novel. Land the big deal. Get a movie made. Finally hit that seven-figure sales mark. Then I’ll feel it. Then I’ll arrive. Then I’ll have made it.

It doesn’t work that way.

I reach one goal and immediately replace it with another. I pass a milestone and barely glance at the sign. I’m too busy looking down the road to notice I’m even on a road to begin with.

That’s how you miss out on your own life.

I’ve published dozens of books. Traveled. Met amazing people, and struck up friendships with a lot of them. I’ve built something real from nothing but the stories in my head and the fire in my belly. But some days I forget to enjoy any of it. I convince myself I’m still behind on the dream. I’m still chasing.

So I need a reminder, now and then, that the journey is the point.

“The man who loves to walk will go further than the man who has a destination.”

I love writing. I’ve done it all my life, since someone bothered to wrap my stubby little kid fingers around one of those fat pencils, and have me practice making letters, and then words, and then sentences and paragraphs and essays.

I have, at times, been pretty lazy about the writing—sometimes, when you’re really good at something, you can get like that. Producing the work takes no real effort, so you put no real effort into doing it. You rest on your laurels, you count on your natural talent to keep wowing people.

It’s sort of the curse of the talented. If you’ve built an identity around your talent, what happens if you have to struggle and grow? What happens if you fail? What happens if you do something you’re known for, and someone criticizes it? Your whole identity crumbles. It feels like dying.

But writing, like a lot of things, isn’t a static skill. It’s born to be dynamic. You’re meant to keep doing it, again and again, and pushing yourself to grow with each attempt. To take risks, to risk failure, is the point. Try this, see the results, now try something else.

That’s the point. That’s how you grow. Not just in writing, in everything.

We don’t get to control the future. We can’t know it. The thing is unwritten. Pure chaos. Undetermined. Uncertain.

I realized at some point that resentment and regret are you trying to live in the past, while anxiety and fear are you trying to live in the future. The only time in your life where you are truly free, where you have full agency, is the present. This moment. Right here, right now.

If we can find joy here, even in the grind, even in the parts that don’t feel like “success” yet… then we’re winning. Because we’re living.

This mindset isn’t just about writing—it’s about being human.

We all live under the shadow of uncertainty. We all carry anxiety over what’s next, what’s missing, what might fall apart.

But the antidote isn’t certainty.

It’s presence.

It’s momentum.

It’s showing up every day and doing the work that matters to you.

Doing what you love, even if you have to do it around what you don’t, is how you spit in the eye of uncertainty. But if you really want to drive a stake into the heart of the vampire that is “living for the future,” you’ll start working hard to learn how to love the journey you’re on. Even the bits that make you uncomfortable. Discomfort is always temporary, one way or another. Show it who’s boss by learning to live in it.

There’s a phrase from Seneca, one of the Stoics: “Is this the thing I feared?”

Is this crappy job the thing I’m afraid of?

Is this time-consuming and tedious task the thing I’m letting define my joy?

Is this disaster the thing I was worried about?

Pfft. No problem. I can eat this toad, first thing in the morning, and go on with the rest of my day.

That’s a Mark Twain-ism. Google that.

Don’t get me wrong—I have goals. I’m chasing a dream. Working toward an endgame.

It’s just that I’m learning to look up from the map once in a while and admire the scenery. To breathe in the moment. To appreciate that this—this work, this path, this morning coffee, this invoice I need to send, this email I need to write—this is part of a good life.

Maybe not the part I enjoy most. But I can find ways to enjoy it. I can, at the very least, enjoy the fruit of it. I can enjoy having it done and over. I can enjoy the things it allows me to do after.

The future is uncertain. Right now, though, is the most powerful we can be.

A NOTE AT THE END

The word I got this morning, as I listened to some uplifting messages to start my day, was “guard your thinking.” Your brain literally forms pathways, physical links, around the thoughts you think. The more you think something, the deeper and wider those neural paths get. Weird, right?

It’s about making it easier to think that thought.

If you’re thinking something again and again, your brain decides it must be important. So it makes it easier to think that thought. And pretty soon, you’re thinking it on autopilot. It’s habit.

Changing that means being uncomfortable. Which we tend to hate. We are wired to avoid discomfort—more of that neural path making. We avoid things that feel painful.

But see, there’s the secret to a good life.

If we can embrace discomfort, we can forge new paths. In our brains. In our lives.

This idea of living here and now, and enjoying the journey, is tied to our habits and our thoughts.

If we teach ourselves to love and embrace discomfort, we get to enjoy every inch of the path we’re on.

That’s the life that leads to constant joy, right there.

The great irony, right?

Joy comes easiest to those who can learn to love misery. Those who can learn to find the joy even in those uncomfortable tasks and moments.

I think it’s worth it for all of us. What about you?

READ ANY GOOD BOOKS LATELY?

Whether you have or haven’t, you might want to take a look at all the good books I have available at https://kevintumlinson.com/books.

Find something you love. Read it, review it, and tell your friends about it. Share this post with them... that’ll teach ‘em.