Wednesday, April 4, 2007

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 very expectations being realized are remote, like winning a 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 is possible, 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 spouting Confucius to an infant or tickling the belly of a businessman.

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.