TOW: Unexpected Surprises

It's funny how humans plan things.  Woody Allen said, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans."

One time, when having a conversation with my friend Brennan and his mother, she mentioned that her second son, Emerson, was a 'surprise.'  I had to think about that for a bit and it made me pause….how can pregnancy be a surprise?  And yet, when you think about it…even when planned, pregnancy is a surprise.  Happy or not-so-expected.  Life is surprising, right from the start.  And when you think about it that way, you'd think more people would be excited by the unexpected.  And yet, we spend most of our lives trying to plan for the unexpected, to be well prepared for things we could never know beforehand, and try and guess what is right and what is wrong.

Why do we make plans?  Why do we care so much about the future?

I think we understand patterns happen in our lives.  We understand that some people are good, some are bad…some situations and events frustrate us, and some make us happy.  We look at new people, at new situations, at new things we have not encountered and think, "Ah, this is just like that one time…"  We can look at life without newness, with an eye that says, "Aha, I understand what is happening here.  I see patterns."  

But then…it's God's laughter.  Because the older and wiser we get, the less likely we're able to deal with unexpected surprises because we think we have seen so much, we think we have seen it all.

And some people stop living, and only accept patterns as what is 'acceptable.'

We don't know it all and we can't predict it all.  And those who wish they could become the most unstable in times of crisis.

I think there are times when we are overwhelmed, when we don't know how to deal with situations that surprise us.  Becoming old is the idea that we want to stop being surprised, we want life to get easier for once, instead of harder.  We want to know that the future is going to be alright.

But we can't know that.  

In the end, we will only be able to reflect on how we reacted to the unexpected, not to what we would have done, had we known.  Because we never will.

The best thing we can do is live for the right reasons, be who we are for the reasons we believe in.  We could become rich and happy, we could become poor and sick.  

But it's probably not what we were expecting, was it?