Showing Up Without Knowing the Ending
A friend recently shared with me how difficult it has become caring for her ninety-year-old mother with dementia.
There are good days and difficult days. Moments of connection and moments of heartbreak. Questions without clear answers. Decisions without certainty. And underneath all of it, the quiet exhaustion that can come from showing up day after day for someone you love.
Around the same time, I read something in The Daily Stoic email from Ryan Holiday that stayed with me. He reflected on how people throughout history lived with many of the same fears and uncertainties we experience today. Like us, they did not know how things would unfold. They simply kept showing up and doing the best they could with what was in front of them.
That idea has stayed with me this week.
Because so much of life is lived exactly that way.
We want certainty. We want reassurance that our efforts will lead exactly where we hope they will. We want to know that the hard conversations, the caregiving, the showing up, and the difficult decisions will somehow resolve neatly in the end.
But most of the time, we do not get that kind of clarity while we are living through it.
Instead, we are asked to keep showing up anyway.
To love people well.
To do our best.
To make thoughtful decisions with the information we have at the time.
To continue moving forward without fully knowing how everything will unfold.
That can feel incredibly difficult, especially when we are carrying grief, stress, responsibility, or uncertainty. It is easy to become consumed by everything that feels unresolved or imperfect. We focus on what could be better, what we should have done differently, or whether we are somehow falling short.
But I think part of moving through difficult seasons well is learning to offer ourselves the same compassion we would naturally offer someone we love.
If your best friend were caring for an aging parent, navigating grief, or carrying the emotional weight of uncertainty, you would not expect perfection from them. You would remind them they are trying. You would acknowledge their effort. You would tell them they are doing the best they can in a difficult situation.
We deserve that same kindness from ourselves.
Sometimes the first step is simply acknowledging our effort instead of dismissing it.
Recognizing that showing up matters.
That continuing to care matters.
That trying again tomorrow matters.
Because while we do not control every outcome, we do control how we show up within the life we are living.
And often, that is enough.
*This post was inspired in part by reflections from Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic. I start many mornings reading his daily emails and continue to find wisdom and perspective in his work.
