Member-only story
I Didn’t See That Coming
I didn’t see that coming — but can I choose positivity over negativity for this?
Things happen outside of our control every single day.
Most are majorly insignificant. Getting cut-off in traffic, having someone hold an elevator for you, unexpected text messages, learning your favorite actor is in a movie, sudden downpours, and so forth. No big deal, these things are frequent occurrences.
Some are annoying, frustrating, irritating, and negative. Others are pleasing, encouraging, helpful, and positive. Either way, they happen and tend to have little overall impact.
But then, there are the bigger things that happen. Good or bad, the reaction you have to them might be, “I didn’t see that coming.”
Because we live in a fear-based society, this is most often associated with the negative. “I didn’t see that coming” implies unexpected negatives. Car accidents, homes burning down, firings, break-ups, and deaths all get tied into this statement.
Thus, more often than not, expecting the unexpected tends to skew negatively. What’s going to go wrong this time? What’s the worst-case scenario? How will this fall apart? And no matter what we plan, we still wind up thinking that I didn’t see that coming.