Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and nothing need arouse one's irritation so long as one doesn't make it bigger than it is by getting irritated. —Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Every day living is a win against OCD! Don’t let up, it’s gonna hurt like hell, but we’ll come out of this stronger than ever! Practice your uncertainty, welcome those nasty thoughts, no matter how horrible or taboo, look at them straight up and laugh! This is not our reality, we choose our own paths! Life was never meant to be serious! There’s no such thing as a serious sunrise, serious tree, or serious bird! Laugh and love, learn to forgive yourself, it’s beautiful once you come out on the other side for once!

OCD feeds on the illusion of permanence. It convinces us that a single thought can last forever, that a mistake will stain us permanently, or that failing to perform a ritual means something irreversible has been set in motion. In that world, everything feels heavy, final, and eternal. But take a step back, not by 200 feet but by 200 years. What will really remain? Nothing we obsess over today will leave even a fingerprint on time. The most successful people in history and the people who made the gravest mistakes all eventually fade into the same silence. Billionaires, beggars, saints, and criminals end up in the same soil. Our names might be remembered for a while, but eventually even that passes. Life is like writing in sand at low tide. The waves come, and they erase every mark, no matter how grand or how small. Think of life as a novel. Every one of us has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. The beginning is birth. The middle is our striving, fumbling, joy, and heartbreak. The ending is death. OCD is like a character inside the book who tries to grab the pen from the author. It says, “Wait, we need to rewrite Chapter 6 or the story is ruined. What if Chapter 8 has a mistake? We must fix it before turning the page.” But the story unfolds anyway. The ending is already written. What makes it good is not whether each chapter was perfect but that the story has an end. Without endings there is no story, only endless noise. We are often taught to see death as a tragedy. But what if death is a promise? Death is what frees us from endless revisions. It closes the book. Whether our lives play out as comedy or tragedy, they become whole. A sunset is beautiful because it ends. Imagine if the sun never set. Its glory would fade into monotony. OCD wants to pause the sunset and replay it frame by frame to make sure it is “done correctly.” But life was never meant to be dissected that way. It was meant to move, to end, and to be received as a gift. This is where God enters the picture in a way that challenges many traditional narratives. Religion often tells us that we need to earn God’s approval through strict rules, moral codes, or by fitting into some framework of perfection. But if God is truly eternal and infinite, then our obsessions and mistakes are not permanent stains. They dissolve in the sea of His eternity just like everything else. Picture God not as a judge with a scorecard but as an ocean. Every drop of water eventually falls into it. The drop does not bring its résumé, its guilt, or its compulsions. It simply becomes part of the source from which it came. OCD is like a drop of water worried that it will not make the right splash. But the ocean receives every drop the same. Here is where the cure begins. OCD insists that “this matters infinitely.” Perspective answers back, “In 200 years none of this will matter. So why not live with fluidity, the way nature intended?” When we stop resisting impermanence, we stop fighting the natural flow of life. Instead of carving our identities into stone, we learn to move like ripples across the surface of water. We let God’s ocean carry us. Suddenly, the demand for absolute control dissolves. Control was always an illusion. Permanence was always a lie. Impermanence is a gift. OCD tries to immortalize every thought and every mistake. But life, death, and God remind us that nothing is immortal except love. Death is not the eraser of meaning but the seal that completes the story. No matter how messy the chapters have been, the ending is a good one simply because it ends.

You’re all ruminating!!! My therapist put it best when I told him, “rumination is my biggest compulsion.” He replied, “rumination is the overarching compulsion, every other one falls under it.” The real muscle you’re trying to train when it comes to uncertainty is the ability to stop ruminating. Rumination isn’t the same as regular thinking, it’s thinking with your will behind it. Your mind will naturally wander and generate thoughts, like clouds drifting across the sky, but ruminating is like grabbing a cloud and trying to squeeze rain out of it. That’s not natural thinking anymore, that’s you forcing the process. And here’s the part people struggle to believe: ruminating is a choice. You can choose not to chase every thought. The key is refusing to treat a thought as gospel truth. Instead, leave it where it is, neutral, just another car passing on the freeway. If you stop running into traffic and just let them drive by, the road gets clearer. The more you practice this, the stronger your “uncertainty muscle” becomes. At first it feels painful, like going to the gym after years of inactivity. But over time, the soreness turns into strength, and what used to weigh you down becomes easier to carry, or not carry at all.