Weird Things Happen

I went for a hike today with my family to the Ruffner Mountain Nature Center. In my pocket were my usual essentials: fingernail clippers, chap stick, pocket knife, floss pick, and my keys. Now, if you would have asked me at the beginning of the hike what the odds were that the floss pick would work its way unassisted onto my keyring by the end of the hike, I would have essentially said it would be impossible. However, upon pulling out my keys, that is exactly what had happened. The floss pick was fully installed with the rest of my keys just as though I had strung it on there myself, and all it took was inserting the aforementioned contents into my pocket and walking several miles.

How often does this kind of scenario play out in our everyday lives? It seems to me that, all too often, we make snap judgements on what will or will not happen. That will never work. He/she will never change. This is not going to go well. I can’t do that. Do any of these statements sound familiar? If they do, there are two things of which I am fairly certain: 1) You have been proven wrong after making a statement like one of these and 2) the outcome of your situation would have been very different if you didn’t make or believe this kind of statement in the first place.

There are a few things that strike me about my keyring incident that I feel are applicable on a day-to-day basis.

• Something unexpected is bound to happen. There was really nothing else spectacular about the hike itself other than this strange occurrence, but it was worthy of note and quite amusing. Perhaps if we start each day with the knowledge that something unexpected will take place, we will be more prepared to deal with it. Problems could become opportunities. Adversaries could become allies. Everyday work could become the chance of a lifetime.
• The right conditions are necessary. If the floss pick and keys were not placed together, the impossible wouldn’t have happened. Likewise, it is important for us to be actively positioning ourselves for happiness, success, etc. Time spent waiting for things to happen to us without actively trying to improve our conditions is time wasted.
• We don’t know what’s going to happen. The fact of the matter is that no one asked me the odds of the floss pick working itself onto my keys; but if they did, my answer would have been dead wrong. Similarly, we often make statements like the ones I mentioned earlier with great conviction, and my guess is that we are often dead wrong. We may not be totally wrong, but we have a good chance of being wrong about some portion of our prediction of the future. We should probably be more cautious of such statements.

My hope is that I can take this seemingly insignificant happening and apply these principles I’ve learned whenever I find myself attempting to predict what will or will not occur.

~ John

P.S. – I highly recommend going on a hike in an elevated place this time of year. The views can be quite breathtaking.

Ruffner Winter View: Overlooking Birmingham, AL