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Neha Kaushik, Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

There was a time when I believed in the illusion of control, in the comforting notion that the future could be neatly mapped out. I had career milestones to reach by 30, relationships that would stand the test of time, a version of myself I believed in with such a fervour that it felt inevitable. And yet life, as it often does, unraveled my carefully constructed expectations thread by thread, until I was left standing in a future I had never foreseen.

The truth is, we can analyze, plan and predict all we want. The future remains unknowable, indifferent to our meticulous forecasts. For those of us who cling too tightly to our predicted future, the moment we realize it will never come to pass is not just unsettling—it is quietly melancholic.

The Weight of a Failed Prediction

A failed prediction is not just about being wrong; it is about losing a version of the future we had come to love, a version that sometimes masquerades as a dream. I have watched people, myself included, mourn the futures they were once certain of. The friend who spent years chasing an academic career only to realize that the dream had faded, leaving behind an empty shell of what once felt like purpose. The partner who built a relationship on the assumption that love at 22 would be love forever, only to wake up at 30 to a reality that no longer fit. The artist who once believed they would paint for a living, but now finds themself in an office, wondering when the dream slipped through their fingers.

There is a particular kind of grief in realizing that a life you once believed was yours will never come to be. It is not just a single loss, but a thousand small ones—the job you imagined yourself thriving in, the home you pictured yourself living in, the person you thought you would become. These lost futures linger in the corners of our minds, occasionally resurfacing in quiet moments, reminding us of what could have been.

And yet, despite the ache of their absence, the universe shows you that what you want is not what you need—sometimes with tough love.

The Beauty of Uncertainty

Life is far more interesting when it refuses to be predicted. Some of the most defining moments of my life happened not because I followed a well-laid plan, but because I abandoned it. The job that was supposed to be temporary became the foundation of a career I loved for a while. The heartbreak that nearly broke me eventually made room for something truer. The city I moved to on a whim, thinking it would be a passing chapter, only to find it becoming home.

We resist uncertainty because we are fearful of the unknown. We forget, unpredictability is what makes life extraordinary. We so love plot twists in books and films—a story that unfolds exactly as expected is dull, lifeless, uninspiring—why, then, do we resist the very twists and turns of our own lives? Is living uncertainty through fiction easier?

The Futility of Forecasting Life

Society teaches us to plan, to be prepared, to have a five-year vision (don’t shy away from accepting you have your retirement planned).

We cling to the idea that if we just calculate every variable correctly, we can outmanoeuvre the chaos. The irony is that our attempts to control the future do not actually prevent disaster—they only make it harder to adapt when things go off course. When they do, it’s hell on earth. It is not uncertainty that destroys us, but our resistance to it.

The Melancholy of a Life That Looks Nothing Like We Imagined

Perhaps the hardest lesson in all of this is accepting that our lives will likely look nothing like we imagined in our early 20s. When we are young, we construct visions of ourselves based on what we know at the time—career ambitions shaped by idealism, relationships that seem eternal because we have not yet learned how time changes people, goals that feel permanent because we have not yet encountered the forces that will mold us into someone new.

But our passions shift. The things we once wanted no longer fit the people we become. The friendships and relationships we thought were unshakable sometimes fade, and the people we swore we’d never become start looking back at us in the mirror.

There is a bittersweetness in this realization. Sometimes, we grieve the people we thought we’d be, the lives we thought we’d live. But there is also a quiet beauty in the unexpected—because within the wreckage of our failed predictions, there is room for reinvention.

Embracing the Unknown

After a lot of grief and chaos, I stopped trying to predict the future. Not because I stopped caring, but because I started trusting. Trusting that the unknown is not to be feared. That a life rigidly planned is a life half-lived.

The moments I could never have foreseen are the ones that changed me the most. The most beautiful things in my life often arrive unannounced, in the spaces between my expectations.

And so, I wake up each day no longer seeking certainty, but curiosity. Not asking, “Where will I be in five years?” but “What is possible that I haven’t even imagined yet?” 

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