Certainty is Comfort

The difficulty in life is that we do not know what to do-that we are unsure of our path, our goal, our selves.  We worry instead about how to pay bills, about raising children, pleasing our lovers, impressing our bosses, or the rut we find our selves in.  Everything in life is a challenge and there aren't easy, clear-cut answers.  Uncertainty is the most challenging thing to face in life and if we could feel sure of things, we would feel much better.  Certainty is safety to our minds, it is not being attacked, not being dumped into the street or by our lover.  Being certain of our health, our home, and our future allows us to enjoy all that life offers us.  Feeling lost and overwhelmed is commonplace and accepted, it's understood that we will be confused about all these things.  So how do we solve it?  We could recognise there is no way to actually solve uncertainty, that the future is uncontrollable.  That would be to admit that we are not the all-powerful, planning- and doing-beings we imagine ourselves to be.  Instead we create a system that we instill with the expectation that it has answers.  We convince ourselves that this process can solve all the problems, create certainty, and has a clear path to follow which will keep us safe.  The future is still just as uncertain and uncontrollable if we believe in hocus-pocus.  The problem lies in believing it and not acting in accord with reality.  If one gives up control of more areas of life and expects that everything will be fine just because of one's prayers, that does not solve the underlying problem.  It will just feel better, because there is no acknowledging of that undesirable uncertainty. 

Religion offers answers.  It does not necessarily offer real answers.