Last night, my husband and I rented a movie from Redbox called Bad Times at the El Royale. It was a noir/mystery type movie that kept you guessing throughout its entirety. I spilled my drink and my snack more than once from jumping out of my skin because the totally unexpected, happened, out of nowhere, more than a dozen times in the movie. It struck me that most of us love the thrill of being surprised in our entertainment, but not so much in our regular lives. We like to live with stability and predictability, but the vicarious thrills of someone else going through something unanticipated, keeps our hearts pumping. Decades ago, I sold college textbooks. We had a hard-nosed, old school district manager who loved to say, “I can handle anything but surprises. Don’t ever let me be surprised.”
“No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.” – Julius Caesar
Oscar Wilde is most notably credited with our “expect the unexpected” adage. We think that we dread unplanned surprises, but there is a certain daring, and enthrallment that comes from being surprised or even surprising ourselves with our own unexpected actions, reactions and creations. Unknowns are not always threatening, hence the term, “happy surprises.” I think that there will always be a large part of our humanity that will always crave stability, but also the sneaky, little, devilish, slightly hidden part of our humanity that just can’t wait for the bombshell to pop out of left field. The mix of both of these elements, is what makes life so sustainable, yet so interesting.
“The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.” – W. H. Auden