There are moments in life that never ask for permission.
They arrive unannounced. A phone call. A diagnosis. A chance encounter. A conversation that changes everything. An opportunity you never imagined. A loss you never saw coming. A person who walks into your life carrying something you didn’t know you needed.
Some unexpected experiences and moments bring joy. Others bring heartbreak. Most arrive wrapped in uncertainty.
And almost immediately, we begin looking for a box.
What is this?
Where does it belong?
What does it mean?
Familiarity
We search for familiar categories because they make us feel safe. If we can name something, perhaps we can manage it. If we can compare it to something we’ve experienced before, perhaps it becomes less frightening. We reach for labels because labels give us the comforting illusion that we understand.
What if something even more subtle is happening?
What if our need to categorise an experience is precisely what limits what it can become?
Remember boxes don’t simply appear. We build them.
And the first building blocks are almost always words.
Before we ever place an experience into a category, we give it a name.
Before we ever place an experience into a box, we give it words.
“This is a setback.”
“This is the end.”
“This is just friendship.”
“This is failure.”
“This shouldn’t have happened.”
Words Come First
The words come first. And the words can become the walls.
Language doesn’t simply describe our experiences; it quietly defines the boundaries of what those experiences are allowed to become. Once we’ve named something, we begin relating to our own description rather than to the experience itself.
What if some of life’s greatest moments were never meant to fit inside the boxes we’ve already built?
Perhaps our discomfort isn’t created by the unexpected itself. Perhaps it comes from our insistence that everything must belong somewhere we already recognise.
We work surprisingly hard at squeezing new experiences into old definitions.
A relationship must become this or that.
A career change must have a logical explanation.
Grief should follow a predictable path.
Success should look a certain way.
Even joy can make us uncomfortable when it doesn’t resemble the picture we had in mind.
And in forcing the unfamiliar into the familiar, I wonder how often we lose the very gift it came to offer.
Some experiences are too alive to be categorised in haste.
Moments That Matter
Some people arrive in our lives carrying a significance that doesn’t fit the language we’ve inherited. Society likes clearly defined relationships, roles, and outcomes. Yet some of the most profound connections exist somewhere between the labels. They don’t become less real because we cannot easily explain them. Perhaps they become more so.
Why do we so often feel discomfort with experiences we cannot categorise?
Maybe because uncertainty asks something of us that certainty never does.
It asks us to trust.
To wait.
To observe before deciding.
To remain curious rather than becoming conclusive.
To allow an experience to speak before we speak for it.
That isn’t easy.
There is a strange vulnerability in allowing something to remain undefined. It feels exposed, unfinished. We fear that if we cannot explain it to others, or even to ourselves, we somehow lose control over it.
So we rush.
We name it.
We label it.
We explain it.
We dismiss it.
Or perhaps even more commonly, we pretend it never happened at all.
Life before the “thing” becomes the life we try desperately to preserve.
We convince ourselves nothing has changed.
We carry on exactly as before.
Yet denial rarely protects us from change. It usually only serves to prolong the tension of resisting it.
The Unexpected
The unexpected has already arrived. Ignoring its presence doesn’t make it leave. It simply means we miss the opportunity to understand why it came.
I’ve often wondered whether wisdom is less about finding answers and more about increasing our capacity to remain with the questions.
To hold an experience gently.
To protect it before defining it.
To nurture it before explaining it.
To let it unfold before deciding what it is.
Perhaps not every relationship requires a definition.
Perhaps not everything requires immediate understanding.
Perhaps some moments simply ask for our presence.
Certainty
There is something profoundly human about wanting certainty. Yet there is something equally human about being transformed by mystery.
Looking back over our lives, the moments that define us are seldom the ones we planned. Often, they are the interruptions. The detours. The conversations we almost didn’t have. The losses that quietly rearranged our priorities. The people who altered the way we see ourselves. The opportunities we almost rejected because they didn’t resemble our expectations.
At the time, they rarely made sense.
Only in hindsight do we recognise that the unexpected wasn’t interrupting our story.
It was writing it.
And perhaps the story it was writing depended on us resisting the urge to name it too soon.
Because every word is a beginning.
Each description opens certain possibilities while quietly closing others.
When we rush to define an experience, we may also limit what it still has the potential to become.
The Invitation
Maybe the invitation, then, is to become comfortable with uncertainty itself.
To trust that meaning sometimes arrives more slowly than the experience itself.
Because every so often, if we have the courage not to rush from the moment, what first feels unsettling becomes quietly defining.
Not because we forced it to fit.
Not because we found the right label.
But because we allowed it to become exactly what it was always meant to be.