What is the difference between a day when joy grabs you by the lapels and head butts you into giddy gladness and days when you're inclined to turn off the phone and go fetal? It might be your choice of recreational drug. Or, it might be the difference between living in possibility and living in expectation.
It's a complex world and expectations are simple. So many things can happen that the odds of our exact expectations being realized are remote, rather like winning the lottery.
When the world fails to meet our expectations it hasn't failed. The world is still there - busily buzzing at the intersection of past and future, what has been and what will be, just as it has been for your entire life. The world is innocent. We are the ones who occasionally lose sight of the fact that we're one in six billion and unlikely to do much to steer this unwieldy planet. We'd have better luck driving an office building and yet we persist to sit at the window and honk our horns, shake our fist, and feel frustrated when the building next to us won't get out of the way and let us through. Our expectations are often as silly as quoting Drucker to an infant or tickling the belly of a businessman.
And this is not so bad. What are the odds that our expectations of life will ever be as amazing as life? What these finite minds project onto an infinite universe will always be some fraction of what is possible.
With that in mind, here is a low-calorie, faux-fortune cookie:
Let the world be what it is and simply see what it has in store for you. Open yourself up to possibility today, laying aside the stale expectations that would otherwise drive you like a flock of bored habits.
5 comments:
Hey there Ron!
When we expect too much we are often disappointed, I have stopped expecting and decided to live!
That's not to say we stop having high standards though :)
Nice essay.
I like this post. It reminded me of The Vinegar Tasters.
"What is the difference between a day when joy grabs you by the lapels and head butts you into giddy gladness and days when you're inclined to turn off the phone and go fetal?"
I would say the difference is largely that of precipitation...try me on a warm, spring-like day with puffy blue clouds and find elation, now try today, with its sleet and snow and joyless sky and there's a whole other cce to behold.
Tisha!
High standards? How high is the sky in an expanding and infinte universe? (Ah, I must be on spring vacation - how else could I type that last sentence with a perfectly straight font?)
Dave - Thanks.
Thomas,
I should try at least one allegory some time. Actually, I can see you pulling that off. Someday, I suspect that I'll be standing in an airport book store and I'll see a book of your writings - ancient allegories for modern times, or some such.
CCE-
Thanks for stopping by. I do tend to forget what cold hands do to my disposition. Here in San Diego with the climate of an indoor shopping mall, we probably do tend to be more relaxed. (Or spoiled, as my relatives in colder climes might put it.)
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