My brother and sister-in-law are having a baby later this
year (sidebar: I’m going to be an aunty – yay!) and they’ve opted not to find
out the gender. Initially I thought this was ridiculous – how can you prepare
adequately if you don’t know what you’re having?! – but my normally ultra-pragmatic
sister-in-law explained that they chose not to find out because “there are so
few surprises in life”. I get that now.
When you think about it, the element of surprise is in desperately
short supply these days.
Everything we need to know is at our fingertips. We can find out the rough time a storm front will roll into town and saturate our washing line, the score of every game of hockey being played at any given moment and the names of game shows currently being watched in Uruguay. We’re used to having data at our fingertips so it’s quite disconcerting and mildly panicky when you aren’t given the information you want at any given moment. In the digital age, instant gratification is our MO.
On Saturday I went to this rad cool crazy event called
Underground Cinema which is sort of like a murder mystery night. You buy a
ticket a few weeks in advance and get told the theme – in this case, the 1950s
and American politics – then you’re invited to a secret meeting where you get
your first clue. A day before, you get told the location, then you turn up on
the night with the instructed random items (in this case an A4
envelope and some earphones) then you have to follow a series of clues by
questioning actors (who played their parts brilliantly) and each other, and making
your way to the venue where the movie will be screened.
For a control freak like me, this lack of advance information
is stress-inducing. How will I get there if I don’t know where I’m going? How
late will I be out? What will I wear? I mean, is the venue going to be covered?
Will I have to walk on paving stones in heels? And crucially, will there be food? I
can’t go more than three hours without a decent meal – not even kidding.
Once I forced myself to take a chill pill, I realised it’s
this lack of information that makes the event so much fun, and so memorable. The
anticipation and the ‘what movie do you think we’ll be watching?’ chats with my
friends in the lead-up make the night enthralling, and I think if I’d known the
movie and the schedule of the night in advance it would still be enjoyable – but
nowhere near as much.
Sometimes when I’m doing angel card readings I get people
demanding specifics: when will I meet my soul mate? How many years will there be between my children?
Will my best friend get deployed to Afghanistan next month? (Seriously – that is
an actual question I have been asked.) This is problematic because the spiritual
realm doesn’t think about timing in the same way we schedule-crazed humans do. Everything
we need to know is revealed to us exactly when we need to know it, and not a minute
before. For people used to being given deadlines and Outlook meeting
appointments, this lack of clarity is outrageous. But the thing is, we’re not
supposed to have all the information at once.
I’m one of those people who reads the last page of a book in advance.
I also have a tendency to, while watching a movie, read the Wikipedia plot in
full. It’s not that I’m not enjoying the story or the plot, it’s just that I want
to know that everything is going to work out OK. But it always does work out OK
– or at least, it works out how it’s supposed to – regardless of me knowing
what will happen or not. It’s very difficult for me to let go of a desire to
know the outcome.
I’m starting to realise that we need more surprises in our
lives. There’s such beauty in not knowing where life is leading us, or how our
story is going to play out.
More surprises, please. But only good ones, obvs.