living inside the maybe

from quantum biology to childhood memory: a story about control and why the brain hates uncertainty

uncertainty can feel like standing in a dark room, empty and quiet. you reach out, hoping to find something solid, some shape or edge to orient yourself against, but all your hands come into contact with is nothingness, and you start to wonder whether you’re moving forward at all, or just falling sideways into some invisible pit. it’s a feeling i used to despise, that space between waiting and knowing, where nothing feels safe and everything feels heavy.

my brain would try to protect me from that dark room. it wanted to slam the door shut, lock it tight, keep everything predictable and still. but there was always that feeling of curiosity, the one that pokes a finger through the crack and wonders what’s on the other side.

meaning, i’ve come to realise, often lives in the unsaid, in the pauses between words, the silence between responses, the hesitation that refuses neat closure. language, like life, is temporary. a snapshot in motion, chasing a wave that’s already gone. words fold moments into shapes we can hold, but those shapes are often just shadows flickering on a wall, echoes of something vast and fluid, impossible to pin down. when you say now, or always, or this is what it means, you’re reaching for something that slips away the moment it’s named. grammar doesn’t just describe reality, it moulds it. it crafts how we see time, how we narrate ourselves, how we build the illusion of certainty. but everything we’re trying to hold still is already moving. time, feeling, thought, all of it blurry, layered, unfolding in spirals rather than straight lines.

when scientists talk about quantum biology, they’re exploring the idea that the rules of the quantum world, where particles can be two things at once, where cause and effect blur, where uncertainty is built into the fabric of everything, don’t just belong to strange experiments in labs, but actually shape how living things work. take birds, for example. some species can migrate thousands of miles and somehow know where they’re going, even across continents, in the dark. it turns out their eyes contain special molecules sensitive to the earth’s magnetic field. this internal compass depends on quantum entanglement, particles in their eyes becoming mysteriously linked, allowing the bird to sense orientation based on interactions that defy classical explanation. it means the bird’s navigation isn’t linear, logical, or predictable. it’s guided by probability, by superposition, by a relationship with uncertainty.

similarly, in plants, during photosynthesis, the energy from sunlight doesn’t just hop randomly from molecule to molecule, it moves through the cell like a wave, exploring many possible paths at once and choosing the most efficient. nature isn’t resisting uncertainty, it’s built from it. it’s using it to move more intelligently, more creatively, more freely. life, at its smallest levels, isn’t fixed or final. it’s uncertain and unfinished. and that uncertainty becomes a resource.

but we, with our human brains, often hate this. our nervous systems are built for survival, not truth. when things become unpredictable, our brains, especially the amygdala and the insula, start sounding alarms. it’s because our earliest wiring tells us that the unknown is dangerous. and in some cases, it was. so many of our mental patterns, confirmation bias, the ambiguity effect, loss aversion, exist to protect us from the discomfort of not knowing. we narrow our vision to avoid doubt. we cling to stories that feel familiar. we try to grip reality like it’s solid, but most of it was never ours to grip.

certainty feels like home, like solid ground beneath our feet, but it can also become an emotional cage. when we define ourselves by what we know, what we believe, what we’re sure of, then uncertainty doesn’t just challenge our facts, it threatens our identities. and yet, the discomfort of not knowing is often where something else begins. because when the brain meets uncertainty, yes, it panics, but it also adapts. it rewires. it reaches. it makes new connections. creativity lives here, not in the safety of already-knowing, but in the tension of maybe. vulnerability, when met without collapse, turns into a kind of soft resilience. and from that, something new can grow.

still, this is not the same for everyone. not everyone meets uncertainty on neutral ground. some people were raised in households where uncertainty meant possibility. others were raised in places where uncertainty meant danger. the shape of not-knowing becomes tangled with memory, with the body’s archive of past experience. like for me, the silent treatment used to undo me completely. i know now that part of that reaction was because, in my early world, silence didn’t mean pause, or breath, or reflection. it meant threat. it meant the floor could drop at any moment. and so i still flinch at those spaces where communication disappears. and i know i’m not alone in this. so many of us carry quiet associations with uncertainty, built from the atmospheres we grew up in. for some people, not knowing is a thrill. for others, it’s a warning. and the measure of how bearable it is, to sit in the blur, will always depend on the texture of what came before.

at the end of the day, the only thing that’s really mine to hold is myself. not what’s coming. not how others respond. not the shape the future takes. just how i move through my own head and body, and even that feels messy. some days thoughts crash in uninvited, feelings spill over, and i’m left trying to gather handfuls of sand that slips through no matter how tight i hold. and yet, i used to think i could control everything outside myself, people, outcomes, how i was seen, how things would unfold. i’d try to lock it all down, to secure some sense of certainty, but it always escaped. it always refused to be gripped. trying to control things outside ourselves is just a quieter form of the fear we carry.

i think, for me at least, living means stepping outside the cage again and again, even when it hurts. leaning into the blur. trusting i don’t have all the answers and probably never will. learning to live with questions as companions instead of enemies. sitting in discomfort without rushing to fix it. and most of the time, that feels like the hardest thing to do. showing up for myself in the unraveling. holding myself when what i thought were facts begin to crumble. i still crave certainty, but i also know it’s a story i tell myself to feel safe.

and safety, sometimes, is just another name for stuck.

uncertainty, on the other hand, uncertainty is alive.

it’s messy. it’s uneven.

but alive.

it doesn’t wait for permission or promise comfort, it just asks us to keep moving

even when we can’t see the ground.