Great Expectations

There are surprises we just can't see coming. But that's a good thing, right? I mean, we throw surprise parties, and those are considered a good thing. We don't like our movies, books, TV shoes, etc. to be predictable. We know that knowing what lies ahead every curve is essentially synonymous with boredom. We do things, go places, say things, what have you, and most of the time, we don't know what to expect as a result. If you knew exactly what the Taj Mahal would look like in person, why would anyone fly to Agra?

And yet, sometimes we can be so dissatisfied with surprises - with the unpredictability of life. When we imagined that we would go to this school, and eventually go into this profession, and then we didn't get into the ivy leagues and we realized that becoming first female president wasn't really a realistic goal - well, it doesn't sit as well as we'd like. And how many of us have planned out such a life beforehand? OK, maybe everyone doesn't sit and make wedding tables during class like someone we know, but I imagine most of you have thought of the general laundry list of characteristics you'd like your spouse to have, or of what you'd like to be when you "grow up", and I'm sure that when you were in high school, you had thoughts on where you'd go to college, and for the most part, you probably assumed business school/law school/med school/grad school was the next logical step. Then you got rejected from Wharton, bombed your LSATs, sat through orgo, realized that that history program takes exactly two people a year, and bam - like that, your imagined life is dust. No one gets on an airplane to nowhere and says "surprise me."

And then sometimes you've gotta wonder if you're living your life the way you were meant to. Last summer I had an epiphany that I summed up in one line: I wasn't meant to be this ordinary. But then, who thinks they are? And then I wondered how I could change it but I couldn't think of anything that would really make me happy, and so I'm just...ordinary, I suppose. And I don't want to be. I want to write. I want to work for a magazine. I want to see my name in print.

I just don't want anyone to read it, is all. Is that too much to ask?

The other day someone told me that he thinks that there were two paths of life that he could see making him happy, and both were extreme. Doesn't anyone think the predictable is happy anymore? Are we satisfied with the paths we're on now? Or do we think that if we don't change the world, or find surprise at every turn, that we're too ordinary, that life's too ordinary?

Could be worse. Ants pretty much just dig and carry stuff. That's pretty lame.