A World Classroom: Surprise, Surprise

20090719

Surprise, Surprise

What makes a surprise surprising? The reason a surprise is surprising is because it means that something happened which we were not thinking about before it happened. In other words, surprises are surprising because they are unexpected.

This may seem an obvious observation (in the 90s it might have elicited a “Duh!” or even the more aggressive “No-Duh!” response), but it carries with it some significant implications about our daily lives.

How many times a day are we surprised? I mean real, absolute surprises, the kind that throw off your concentration or, in some cases, make you jump. How many times a day do they come? Once? Twice? Maybe, on a particularly action-packed day, five or ten times, tops?

I know what you’re thinking. “Get to the point, you raving lunatic! I only happened upon this blog by chance, and your time is up! Stimulate my mind and/or spirit, or I’m clicking the ‘Back’ button and getting out of here!”

Well, fear not, for here is the crux of the matter. We are surprised when something happens which was not previously in our mind, when something unexpected happens. We further concluded that approximately .1% of daily happenings are surprises. That means that 99.9% of daily happenings are things that we were thinking about prior to their occurrence!

So the point is this: think carefully. Thought is a life-changing power. Depending on how it is used, it will make or break you. Use it wisely, and life will be a joy.

For further reading (and there are few more edifying books than these), please consult As A Man Thinketh by James Allen, and The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. Either book will be enough to begin a monumental period of change and improvement in your life. I guarantee it.

If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience. (Edward Rickenbacker)

"Thinking on these things,"
Joezilla

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Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. And where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born...to eternal life. Amen.

Read This Now

"I don’t know why we take our worst moods so much more seriously than our best ones, crediting depression with more clarity than euphoria. It’s easy now to dismiss that year as nothing more than the same sort of shaky, hysterical high you’d experience after being clipped by a taxi. But you could also try to think of it as a glimpse of grace. It’s like the revelation I had when I was a kid the first time I ever flew in an airplane: when you break through the cloud cover you realize that above the passing squalls and doldrums there is a realm of eternal sunlight, so keen and brilliant you have to squint against it, a vision to hold onto and take back with you when you descend once more beneath the clouds, under the oppressive, petty jurisdiction of the local weather."

To read the entire article, click here.