I am leaving on a Jet Plane

 

Tomorrow at 5:00am Kim and I leave for a week in a cabin with no electricity in Colorado. We are both very excited about all the possibilities for this time, but we are approaching the opportunity very differently. We are going into it wanting and thus expecting such different outcomes. How do we manage to find that happy balance of meeting both our desires?

 

Clarifying expectations is so important yet it is seldom done effectively and there in lies much of our dissatisfaction in life. We fail to communicate our expectations or fail to do the honest examination required to make our expectations realistic and as a result fail to get our expectations met. Lately it seems like I continually meet with people who are unhappy. Initially they can’t decipher why, but eventually they discover “their expectations” have not been met.  Why are we so reluctant to really admit what we want? Are we even really aware of our driving inner desires? I have this theory that our expectations determine everything. Dissatisfaction is merely unmet expectation. Excellence is surpassed expectations. The same experience, the same service in story, the same meal in a restaurant is experienced differently by different people depending entirely on their expectation.

 

Now I am not suggesting the key to happiness is merely having low expectations of everything, but I am saying we need to be aware of our expectations. Name them.  Examine them. See if they are appropriate. See if they are realistic. Sometimes I wonder, why do we always have to have so many expectations? Sometimes can’t we just let things be whatever they turn out to be?

 

Anyway, I will let you know how it turns out.

Navigating Change

My Son, Cole, is continuing to teach me through his learning to drive. Recently, I noticed how we change lanes differently. He, being the thoughtful careful one, slows down whenever he changes lanes. I, on the other hand, speed up when I change lanes. Now I suppose a good logical argument could be made for either approach, but the real lesson has more to do with life than driving.

 

I hope I am not simply attempting to defend my actions. My aim is to help all of you with whom my life is so beautifully connected to better understand how and why I behave the way I do. I speed up when I change. It doesn’t matter what change I am facing, when change is necessary I move faster. The increased momentum provides me greater balance. The reason for change, to me, comes from looking ahead and seeing the need or necessity to be in a different place. Looking ahead you can see what is and what isn’t there. The danger, the uncertainty, for me, of change is not in the future it is in the moment or even in breaking with the past. In other words, the risk comes from what is gaining on you from behind or what lays hidden beside you. So I speed up as I change to keep from hitting the hidden things around me. The rapid forward progress pushes me past the blind spots toward the open space out front.

 

For many people, perhaps most, the tension and uncertainty created by change makes slowing down the only logical option. To speed up seems reckless and dangerous.  So to those who for whatever reason have ended up riding through life with me, buckle up because I speed up when I change.

 

Do you speed up or slow down when you change lanes in life?