The Uncertainties of Life in Cuba

By Safie M. González

HAVANA TIMES – There comes an age when we begin making plans. Not necessarily big ones. Sometimes it is enough to decide what we will do on Saturday, when we might be able to fix something around the house, what we want to buy next month, or when it would be a good time to start something we have been putting off for a while.

In Cuba, making plans can become a form of hope. It can also be a gamble.

Because there are days when it is difficult to know what tomorrow will look like. The power may go out for many hours and disrupt everything that seemed organized. Transportation may not show up. Something that cost a certain amount yesterday may have a different price when we go back for it. A medicine may be unavailable. An errand may take longer than expected. Someone may decide to leave the country, leaving behind a room, a cup, a few photographs, and the question of when they will see each other again.

Uncertainty does not always arrive with a bang. Sometimes it settles in slowly. It looks like checking your phone before getting out of bed. Asking whether the power is back. Writing to someone to find out whether they managed to get what they were looking for. Setting aside a little money in case an unexpected need arises. Not buying something today because something else may be needed tomorrow.

There is a way of living in constant anticipation of what might happen. Over time, you learn to think ahead. Not because you have become particularly good at planning, but because experience teaches you that every plan may need an alternative.

And then come the plans that are not called plans:

If the power comes back, I’ll do this. If I find transportation, I’ll go. If the medication becomes available, I’ll buy it. If the money is enough, I’ll fix that. If everything works out, maybe Sunday.

Life begins to fill up with conditionals. Perhaps the strangest thing is that this way of living eventually starts to feel normal. You get used to not knowing. You get used to certain questions not having answers yet. You learn to wait without a precise date, to postpone without giving up entirely, to keep one possibility open while preparing another.

You also learn not to get too excited too soon. Some desires begin to be spoken about in a whisper. Not because they have stopped mattering, but because it is difficult to fully trust in a future that so often changes shape before it arrives.

This happens with small things too. A visit is canceled because there is no transportation. A meal that has to be changed because an ingredient is missing. The repair that remains unfinished because the part could not be found. An outing that is postponed because the day went by amid blackouts and tasks that could not wait.

Uncertainty leaves behind small interruptions. Almost imperceptible ones. But there are many of them. Perhaps that is why exhaustion can sometimes be difficult to explain. It does not always come from having done too much. It can come from having had to think too much.

From calculating, anticipating, looking for alternatives, asking questions, calculating again.

There is a particular kind of weariness that comes from living with the feeling that everyday life requires a vigilance it did not require before. And yet, life continues to demand other things.

To love, study, work, create, fall in love, care for someone, think about having a home of your own, imagine a family, want to stay, want to leave.

All those decisions require a future, even a small one. Perhaps that is why uncertainty does not only change the way we organize our days. It can also transform our relationship with our dreams.

Some people have learned to live with unfinished projects. Others have scaled them down to the size of what is possible. Some continue building them with a patience that, from the outside, may look like stubbornness.

Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is also a form of private resistance: continuing to imagine a life that still cannot be guaranteed.

Amid it all, small certainties emerge. The neighbor who knows where to find something. The friend who calls when a product becomes available. The person who lends you a tool. The family member who sends a message from far away. The conversation that stretches on along a sidewalk because no one is in a hurry to return to a house without electricity.

They do not resolve the uncertainty. But they make it weigh less heavily.

There is something profoundly human about seeking companionship when the future becomes uncertain. As though, faced with the impossibility of controlling what is coming, we can still decide who we will go through it with.

Perhaps living in Cuba today is partly about that: learning to sustain life as certainties diminish.

Not knowing whether there will be electricity tomorrow and preparing the coffee maker anyway. Not knowing when what we are waiting for will arrive and continuing to look for it. Not knowing what will become of a project and working on it nonetheless.

Not knowing how long a goodbye will last and embracing each other. Not knowing exactly what the future will bring but saving a place for it.

Because uncertainty has a quiet way of taking over everything. It finds its way into schedules, shopping, travel, conversations, and plans. Sometimes it even reaches our dreams.

But something still resists it: the habit of continuing to hope for something good. Perhaps it is not a certainty. Perhaps it is simply a decision.

We’ll see tomorrow. And in the meantime, today is still here.

Read more from the diary of Safie M. Gonzalez here in Havana Times.