4.The Future I Cannot Promise Myself

A Life Still Becoming

Seven personal essays by Jean T. Hatoum

A series about rebuilding, uncertainty, identity, the things we carry, and the possibility of a future that hasn't fully revealed itself yet.

4.The Future I Cannot Promise Myself — Living with uncertainty without pretending to have all the answers.

Living with uncertainty without pretending to have all the answers.

There was a time when I thought that, if I could just survive the present, the future would eventually become easier to understand.

I imagined that somewhere beyond the difficult days, beyond the exhaustion and the moments when simply continuing felt like an achievement, there would be a place where things finally made sense. A place where I could look back at everything I had endured and recognize the beginning of a different life.

Perhaps I would feel safer there. Perhaps I would finally understand why certain things happened, what they had taken from me, and what I was supposed to do with whatever remained.

Perhaps I would wake up one morning and realize that the uncertainty was over.

But life has never offered me such a promise.

I am still here, trying to build something out of what remains, carrying memories I cannot put down simply because I want to move forward. I still have dreams, although I sometimes struggle to imagine how they might become real. I still make plans, even when circumstances can change them without warning.

And I am learning that the future is not a place I can reach simply by surviving long enough.

It is something I must approach without knowing exactly what is waiting for me.

That is a difficult thing to accept when so much of life has already been beyond my control.

The comfort of having an answer

Uncertainty has a particular weight when you have spent years trying to understand what happened to you.

You look for explanations. You search for patterns. You revisit conversations, decisions, memories, and moments that might help you understand how your life became what it is. You try to identify the point where things changed, hoping that if you can understand the past well enough, you might be able to protect yourself from whatever comes next.

Sometimes, understanding helps.

Other times, there is no explanation that makes the pain smaller. There are events that cannot be undone, losses that cannot be negotiated with, and circumstances that do not become fair simply because we have learned how to describe them.

And there are questions that remain unanswered no matter how many times we ask them.

Will things improve?

Will the work I am doing lead somewhere?

Will the people I love be safe?

Will the things I have written find the readers I hope they will reach?

Will I eventually have the opportunity to build the life I keep imagining?

I cannot answer all these questions honestly. I cannot turn a wish into a guarantee or a possibility into a certainty simply because I need something to hold on to.

I would rather admit that I do not know than offer myself a comforting lie.

But admitting that I do not know is not the same as giving up.

Perhaps this is one of the hardest things we have to learn: we can acknowledge the limits of our knowledge without surrendering every possibility that lies beyond them.

We can be uncertain and still be willing to try.

We can be frightened and still make a plan.

We can have no guarantee of success and still decide that something matters enough to pursue.

The absence of certainty does not automatically mean the absence of a future.

I have dreams, but I do not have guarantees

I want my writing to reach people.

I want the books I have worked so hard to bring into the world to find their readers. I want the stories and poems that began in private moments of pain to become something that exists beyond me, something another person might encounter at exactly the moment they need it.

I want to finish the work I have started. I want to write the stories that are still waiting for me. I want to discover what else I can create if life gives me the time, the health, the stability, and the opportunity to continue.

And, if I am honest, I want more than survival.

I want a life in which I can make plans without feeling that everything depends on circumstances I cannot control. I want to experience ordinary days without having to treat every small moment of peace as something that might disappear at any second. I want to have room for things that are not emergencies, for the simple experience of being alive without constantly trying to recover from something.

There is nothing unreasonable about wanting these things.

But wanting them does not mean I can promise myself that they will happen.

Publishing a book does not guarantee that it will find an audience. Working hard does not guarantee recognition. Having a dream does not guarantee that the world will make room for it.

And surviving difficult experiences does not mean that life owes us an easy chapter in return.

I wish it worked that way. I wish there were a point at which endurance became a kind of protection, a point after which we could finally say that we had suffered enough and that nothing else would be taken from us.

But I cannot build my future around a promise no one has made.

What I can do is continue to give my dreams a chance.

I can write another page. I can revise a chapter. I can share my work with someone who might connect with it. I can look for opportunities, ask for help, and keep learning what is possible.

These actions may not lead exactly where I hope they will.

They are still worth taking.

My dreams do not become meaningless simply because I cannot guarantee their outcome. Their value does not depend entirely on whether the future rewards me for having them.

They are part of the life I want to build, and for now, that is enough reason to keep making room for them.

When the world can change overnight

Some people speak about the future as though it is a straight road.

They imagine where they will live, what they will accomplish, who will be beside them, and what their lives might look like in five or ten years. They make plans and expect, reasonably enough, to have the time to follow them.

I understand the comfort of that kind of thinking.

But when you have watched circumstances change everything in a moment, it becomes difficult to trust the distance between the life you have and the life you expect to have.

My family knows something about rebuilding.

After the destruction of the 2024 war, we had to rebuild our lives. We tried to find our footing again, to restore some sense of normality, to believe that the effort we were making could lead to a more stable future.

Then, on February 28, 2026, our home was bombed again.

We had to flee toward Beirut, and during that escape, my mother suffered a heart attack.

There are experiences after which the word future no longer feels abstract.

It becomes a question of where you will go, what you can save, whether the people you love will make it through, and how you are supposed to begin thinking about tomorrow when the present has become so frightening.

I cannot write about uncertainty as though it were merely an uncomfortable feeling or an interesting philosophical idea. Sometimes uncertainty is the reality of not knowing what will happen to your family, your home, or the life you have spent years trying to put back together.

And I cannot tell anyone who has lived through something similar that they should simply remain hopeful.

Hope is not an obligation. It is not a test of character, and it is not a measure of how well someone is coping.

There are days when the most honest thing a person can say is that they are frightened. There are moments when they cannot imagine what comes next, and no inspirational sentence can make the circumstances less real.

I do not want to take those moments away from anyone, including myself.

I only want to leave room for the possibility that not knowing what happens next does not mean that nothing good can ever happen again.

I cannot promise myself that life will become predictable.

I cannot promise that everything we lose will be restored or that the next chapter will be gentler than the last.

I can only acknowledge what has happened, grieve what needs to be grieved, and keep looking for whatever possibilities remain available to us.

Sometimes, that is all the future allows us to do.

The pressure to turn uncertainty into hope

There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with telling people you are trying to rebuild your life.

People want to know what you have learned. They want to hear that you are stronger now, that you have discovered a new purpose, that the difficult things you experienced have given you a clearer understanding of what matters.

And perhaps some of those things are true.

But I do not believe that every painful experience needs to become a lesson before we are allowed to move forward.

Some things are simply painful.

Some things leave damage that requires time, support, and practical help. Some things make the world feel less safe than it once did. Some things interrupt our lives without giving us anything in return that could reasonably be called a gift.

I do not want to pretend otherwise just to make my story easier to read.

If I am writing about the future, I want to write about it honestly.

I want to admit that I can be hopeful in the morning and afraid by the evening. I can imagine beautiful things for my life and still struggle to believe they are possible. I can work toward a goal while knowing that I may encounter obstacles I cannot anticipate.

These feelings do not cancel one another out.

I do not have to choose between believing in the possibility of a better life and acknowledging that I am frightened of what might happen.

I do not have to make my uncertainty sound poetic before it deserves to be heard.

And I do not have to prove that I have healed by speaking about tomorrow as though I am no longer afraid.

Perhaps honesty means allowing the future to remain uncertain in our writing, just as it remains uncertain in our lives.

Perhaps it means saying, I hope this works out, but I do not know.

Perhaps it means allowing that sentence to be complete without rushing to soften it.

Building without knowing

For a long time, I thought that planning required confidence.

I imagined that I needed to know where I was going before I could take the first step, that I needed a clear picture of the destination before I could justify the work of getting there.

But I am beginning to understand that some lives have to be built without a complete map.

You begin with what is available to you. You work with your circumstances rather than the ones you wish you had. You make a decision, see what happens, and adjust when something changes.

You learn to distinguish between what you can influence and what you cannot control.

You make plans, but you leave room for them to change.

You allow yourself to want things without demanding that every desire become a certainty before you are willing to acknowledge it.

For me, writing has become one small part of this process.

I cannot control how many people will read my books. I cannot decide how the world will respond to my work or whether the opportunities I hope for will arrive when I need them.

But I can continue to write.

I can finish a story because it matters to me. I can publish something that once existed only in my thoughts. I can share a piece of myself without knowing who will encounter it or what they might take from it.

I can keep working toward the future I imagine while remaining honest about the fact that it is not guaranteed.

There is no certainty in that.

There is, however, participation.

I am not simply waiting for the future to arrive and decide what my life will become. Where I have the ability to act, I can take part in building it.

That does not mean I can overcome every obstacle through determination. It does not mean that effort will always be enough. Circumstances, health, money, safety, opportunity, and the decisions of other people can shape our lives in ways we cannot simply will away.

I know that.

Building a future is not a solitary achievement, and it is not always a matter of trying harder.

Sometimes it requires help. Sometimes it requires rest. Sometimes it requires changing direction, accepting a limitation, or admitting that a particular path is no longer possible.

Sometimes it means waiting until there is a safe enough place to take the next step.

I want to make room for all of these possibilities.

I do not need to know the entire story to participate in the part I am living now.

The future I cannot promise myself

I cannot promise myself that everything will work out.

I cannot promise that I will achieve every dream I have carried through the difficult years. I cannot promise that I will never experience another loss, another disappointment, or another moment when the life I am building feels impossibly far away.

I cannot promise that one day I will look back and understand every turn that brought me here.

But perhaps I have been asking the future to give me something it cannot give anyone: certainty in exchange for the willingness to continue.

Perhaps I have been waiting for a guarantee before allowing myself to believe that my efforts matter.

And perhaps I can begin to live differently without pretending that I have conquered my fear.

I can tell myself that I want a future, even when I cannot picture it clearly.

I can acknowledge that I am tired without deciding that tiredness is the end of my story.

I can make room for ambition and disappointment, for hope and grief, for the things I want and the things I may have to learn to live without.

I can stop treating every unanswered question as proof that I am failing to move forward.

Not every question needs an answer today.

Not every plan needs to be permanent.

Not every step needs to lead directly to the destination I imagined.

Sometimes, the most honest form of progress is allowing ourselves to continue without knowing exactly what continuing will bring.

I still want to build a life that feels like mine. I still want my writing to reach people. I still want to discover what is possible beyond the experiences that have shaped me.

I do not know whether the future will look the way I hope it will.

But I know that I do not want fear of the unknown to be the only thing that determines what I allow myself to imagine.

So I will keep writing. I will keep making plans where I can. I will keep adjusting when life requires me to. I will try to recognize the opportunities that are available without pretending that every obstacle can be overcome by wanting something badly enough.

And when I cannot see very far ahead, I will try to remember that the inability to see the road is not the same as proof that there is no road.

I am not writing a promise about how my life will end up.

I am writing an acknowledgment that my life is still unfolding, and that I am allowed to take part in that unfolding even without knowing the ending.

Maybe that is what it means to live with uncertainty: not to become fearless, not to believe that everything will turn out well, and not to force ourselves to find a hidden meaning in every difficult thing.

Maybe it means learning to leave the future open.

To want something without knowing whether we will receive it.

To make an effort without demanding a guarantee.

To admit that we are afraid and still allow ourselves to imagine a life beyond that fear.

I cannot promise myself the future I want.

But I can stop requiring a promise before I let myself want it.

And for now, as I continue building a life that is still becoming, that is where I want to begin.

— Jean T. Hatoum

Author of I Wrote So I Would Not Fade and J’ai Écrit Pour Ne Pas M’effacer

If these words felt like home, the rest of the map is in the book.

Kindly & Please: if you are able to supporting my journey, buy the books, check out my fundraising or simply share it, it will  help me graciously to continue treatment and afford my medications the that keeps my own fractured ember burning. 

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I’m not finished surviving out loud. 🕊️ 

This essay is part of A Life Still Becoming, a series about the person behind the words, the life beyond survival, and the future that remains unwritten.