Learn to expect the unexpected

A popular practice is to arrange a party for a person, while carefully concealing plans for the event. Picture the scene! The unsuspecting individual returns from work, perplexed to find the house dark and silent. Suddenly, the door flies open and the place lights up like a Christmas tree. Family and friends stand in the hallway, yelling ‘Happy Birthday!’

Surprises are splendid, even when less dramatic. The other day, I heard from a neighbour of mine, whose daughter I help with English. Aamina is a bright young girl and I look forward to my weekly sessions with her. When her mother phoned, I thought it was to ask me when I would be resuming our temporarily suspended classes. She was calling, however, to ask if I was at home. Aamina arrived soon after, bearing a box of mangoes from her native, Belagavi. Articulate enough when I teach her, I was momentarily lost for words.

The reason, in part, was because I had just been thinking how the season was slipping by, without my having savoured much of my favourite fruit. Was I (somewhere in my subconscious) expecting the unexpected? “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect,” declares a character in Oscar Wilde’s 19th-century play, An Ideal Husband. The remark is made in a specific context, but ‘expect the unexpected’ has since become a catchphrase.

It means that we should not be taken aback by extraordinary occurrences. Now, that is not difficult when wonderful things come our way. Among our myriad human frailties is the complacent conviction that we deserve all the good gifts we receive, fortuitously or otherwise. Sadly, the unexpected also befalls us in the form of tragedies, such as those experienced by the victims of the recent attacks in Sri Lanka. Did the people enjoying their breakfast or engaged in worship expect to be bombed to bits?

We would be wise, perhaps, to adopt as a meaningful motto this line from a poem by Maya Angelou: ‘Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.’