A 6 foot tall, dark-haired woman with a Romanian accent approached me and said, “Happy Birthday, Lynn. I hope the year ahead will be full of good surprises!”
Good surprises? How strange those two words sounded together.
When was it, I wondered, that “good surprises” had come to sound like an oxymoron; at what point had I become suspicious of the unknown?
Her words stayed with me over the coming weeks and months and prompted me to wonder what surprises I was missing if I only scanned the day for bad surprises.
Sometimes in life – especially in these past 3 years with COVID – a sequence of events can begin to prompt us to assume surprises will only knock us off course or drop something negative in our path.
But if we think about, it wasn’t always that way- as children, we eagerly anticipated a birthday gift or a secret plan. It rarely occurs to a child that a surprise might bring anything unwanted.
So I decided in the next year of my life, I would adopt a different posture towards each new day. Instead of scanning for unpleasant surprises, I was going to expect to be surprised… by something good. I was going to keep my eyes on the surprise -the good ones.
——
If you have been forwarded this email and would like to join a community of people pondering how to feel better in their lives you can subscribe and receive a daily email here.
On Emotions 