The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it. — Alan Watts
—What lingers after this line?
One-minute reflection
What does this quote ask you to notice today?
A Counterintuitive Instruction
Alan Watts frames change not as a puzzle to solve from a safe distance, but as a current you understand only by swimming in it. The line rejects the common instinct to pause life until things “settle,” suggesting that clarity often arrives after movement begins. In that sense, meaning is not discovered in advance; it is generated through participation. This reframing also implies that change is less an event and more an environment. Once you see it that way, “making sense” becomes less about finding a perfect explanation and more about developing the feel for navigating uncertainty as it unfolds.
Why Observation Alone Falls Short
From there, Watts’s point highlights the limits of detached analysis. We can map scenarios, list pros and cons, and rehearse possible outcomes, yet the lived reality of change contains textures that planning can’t simulate—emotions, timing, unexpected constraints, and the reactions of other people. By staying on the sidelines, we end up demanding certainty from a situation that can only offer probability. This is why transitions—moving cities, changing careers, ending relationships—often remain confusing until we take real steps. The first actions create feedback, and that feedback becomes the raw data from which understanding is built.
The Philosophy Behind “Plunging”
Watts, drawing from Zen and Daoist sensibilities in works like The Way of Zen (1957), frequently argued that life is process rather than a set of fixed states. In that view, trying to secure an unchanging vantage point is itself the source of anxiety, because it contradicts the nature of experience. “Plunging” becomes an acceptance practice: you stop negotiating with impermanence and start cooperating with it. Consequently, sense-making shifts from control to responsiveness. Instead of asking how to eliminate uncertainty, you learn how to meet it—moment by moment—without requiring it to become something else first.
Learning Through Action and Feedback
Practically speaking, plunging into change resembles experiential learning: you act, observe what happens, adjust, and act again. A person who wants to become a manager can read books for years, but real understanding emerges when they lead a meeting, handle conflict, and realize what motivates their team. In that sequence, action isn’t reckless; it’s the mechanism that produces discernment. Even small experiments can count as plunging. A trial project, a difficult conversation, or a week of living according to a new routine can reveal more than endless deliberation, because the world responds to what you actually do.
Fear, Identity, and the Need for Movement
Still, the instruction to plunge confronts fear, because change threatens identity: if the situation shifts, who am I inside it? Watts’s line implies that the self we are trying to protect is also in motion, and waiting for confidence before acting can become a way of avoiding the grief of letting old versions of ourselves dissolve. Yet as you move, a quieter confidence forms—less like certainty and more like adaptability. You learn that you can remain coherent even while your circumstances evolve, and that stability can come from skills and values rather than from unchanging conditions.
How to Plunge Without Being Swept Away
Finally, plunging is not the same as abandoning judgment; it can be done with intention. You can enter change in increments—set a short horizon, define what “enough information” looks like, and build support systems—while still committing to participation rather than paralysis. The point is to trade the fantasy of total control for the discipline of iterative engagement. In the end, Watts suggests that change becomes sensible when it becomes familiar, and familiarity comes from contact. By stepping in, you stop treating life like a riddle and start treating it like a practice.