Thursday's Thoughts: Anticipation

Thursday's Thoughts: a taste of what I'm thinking

Anticipation and excitement are a normal part of life.  Yet often times, the pessimist in me holds back, saying, don't get your hopes up, you'll just be disappointed.  This can lead to a boring, middle-of-the-road outlook that zaps the fun out of life.  On the other hand, it's good to look at a situation realistically rather than dreaming of idealistic extremes.

I think I associate disappointment with the same negative feelings I associate with failure and rejection. I don't want to get my hopes up and then be let down.  If I'm not expecting too much in the first place, then I won't be disappointed if it doesn't turn out.  And, if it does turn out, then I'll be pleasantly surprised.  It's almost as if I try to save the excitement until I'm sure it's valid.  But disappointment is a part of life, as are failure and rejection.  Rather than fear them or brace myself for their potential impact, I could accept, process and move on.

Blah, I really don't feel like over-analyzing this right now.  I somehow lost both my train of thought and motivation between here and the first paragraph.   Besides, I should probably think this through a little more before I go posting things online for others to read.  There are several ways I could go on this and I'm not quite sure what I think yet.  Anyway, I know there's a healthy balance out there between excited anticipation and the "yeah right" pessimistic attitude.  That's as deep as I'll go for now.

About the only thing I can remember not doing this with is snow days.  Growing up I would hope and hope and hope for snow days.  I remember excitedly listening to the radio and watching the school closings endlessly scroll across the bottom of the T.V. screen, just waiting for my school to be announced.  Being that our school was near the end of the alphabet, it would take forever and the anticipation would continue to build.  When the announcements finally came to the letter R, it was unbelievable how many other schools started with R as well.  Surely if they were all closed, ours would be too.  If our school was listed, it was utter excitement and then we would watch the listings once more to be sure and then again to celebrate.  If the cancellation was a 2-hour delay, the anticipation would continue and our eyes would remain glued to the screen, waiting for a full closing.

No matter how small the chance of snow, I always got my hopes up.  Probably because I knew the results were not dependent on me, my performance, or anything in my control.  If we still had school, it was a little disappointing, but it wasn't a huge let down.  The thought of a snow day was so exciting that the neighborhood kids would plot ways to create a snow day.  We lived right next to the department of transportation and fantasized climbing over the fence to unscrew the bolts on all the snow plows.  Without plows to clear the roads, we we wouldn't need as much snow to warrant a day off.  If that scheme failed, we planned to gather all the snow in town and pile it in the superintendent's driveway or just outside his window.  Of course this would trick him into thinking there had been a huge storm and he would then declare it a snow day.

Sorry to bring up the s word.  I should have left those stories for another time.  Don't worry, there are still plenty of beautiful fall days left and maybe even an Indian summer. I've been loving the weather these past few weeks, but that's another topic for another day.

Food for Thought: "The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." -Proverbs 27:12