Expecting Weeds Only to Find Strawberries

Sometimes the experiences we get instead of what we expect—like when we expect only to pick weeds but instead get the joy of picking the first strawberry of the season—those serendipitous moments can actually be even better than the ones that we plan.

I recently returned from a work assignment. And though it’s been nice to get back to my regular role and work with some wonderful coworkers, the transition has been hard in some ways. The first couple of days back I felt kind of frustrated honestly. And I think that's sort of a natural because we like to be able to control our expectations.

We like it when plans pan out how we hoped. But I think there's another way of looking at it. I've discovered that nothing ever pans out exactly how how we plan or how we've expected things to work out: never. And so even the best laid plans never play out exactly how we want them to. And if we are always striving to hold fast, trying to cling to and to control what expectations we have, or our hopes we're bound to be disappointed.

But if we on the flip side, just give enough room in our mindset and in our heart to look for new opportunities, because they're always out there, we’ll be in a better position to find them. I've thought about when I plan to weed my garden, I plan to do it for an hour or two. And I expect to leave the garden free of weeds. But what a wonderful surprise it is when I see the first fresh strawberry has just ripened and I can eat it and how wonderful that is. That was more than I had anticipated from the weeding experience for sure.

Or when we take a walk that we know so well that we could probably do it blindfolded but if we're open to new experiences maybe a beautiful bird will serenade us, and we pay extra attention to it. Or maybe the dog that normally barks at us that normally annoys us, maybe we bring a treat, and we try to befriend the dog instead.

There's something really exciting about thinking about all of the possibilities, all of the wonderful possibilities. If we're just open to them no life experience needs to be totally disappointing. We all have had disappointments over the last couple of years. Holiday plans or vacations or jobs not gotten or lost or even possibly much worse—a loved one might have died. And I can’t even begin to understand how hard hard or how hurtful some of those experiences might have been. But sometimes if we just change our focus, if we look for the opportunities in the world rather than looking at just at the things that we've lost, when we realize that the experience is not what we thought we would have, new opportunities can come.

Sometimes the experiences we get instead of what we expect—like when we expect only to pick weeds but instead get the joy of picking the first strawberry of the season—those serendipitous moments can actually be even better than the ones that we plan.