ON SURPRISES...

Now I’ve spent a lot of time in my life thinking about how it would wind up in the end. And from what I’ve gathered talking to other like-minded people, it seems to be a pretty normal thing to do – you know, speculate about love, and money, and friends, and how many of your wishes you’d end up fulfilling (‘Dude, even if there’s nothing else, I’m going to get that Lamborghini!’), and how you’d die (one of my friends, the kind that had all the charm of a suicidal writer, wanted to inject himself with rat poison on his thirty third birthday, I personally prefer cancer – painful as it would be, the movies make it look really classy), and how many people would show up at your funeral (I can never decide whether I want a lot of people, or just three). These were apparently so typical that it was acceptable to get drunk and ‘share’ (it’s in inverted commas as a reference to things people do at support groups, which is often what drunk sessions become).

But aside of these I thought about other things too – really, I thought a lot. LOT.

I thought about finding the perfect girl, getting everything right with her, finding love in the smallest of things. Sometimes it was really mushy – straight out of a teenage fiction novella – like spending lazy Sunday afternoons with ice cream and a book, getting married, having children (I’d thought of number and names), raising them, and being proud at their piano recitals and graduation ceremonies.

I thought at other times of never finding love at all. Of meeting people who seemed almost perfect, but being unable to live in a compromise – and eventually turning to art or something like that. I sometimes really wanted to be more like that the friend with the charm of a suicidal writer. I imagined walking in and out of people’s lives, getting disappointed, and finally surviving only because some friends had decided to stand by me. These stories usually ended with me being alone, and when asked why I was alone, I’d invariably answer cryptically ‘That, my dear, is a story for another day.’

I thought of a life that would make Tony Stark and Barney Stinson envious – money, women, Italian suits and Scotch. I thought of joining the armed forces, leading a life of such hardship and danger that these romantic visions would drown themselves out (does this count as a Catch 22? Imagining something that would block your imagination?). I’ve thought of chucking everything and living like a vagabond – something like Nolan’s Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins – apparently in search of worldly inspiration. I’ve thought of publishing a book. The number of times I’ve imagined myself as the protagonist of a film or a book is not even funny, saying climactic dialogues and turning away as imaginary explosions raged behind me. Basically, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, and the attention to detail is well, staggering sometimes.

In the end, life still manages to surprise me. No matter what I cook up in my head – the stories, the details, the names of my future kids, the title of my future book, and the complicated cancer that eventually kills me (though I remain miraculously cheerful through it, and die with a smile ‘embracing death like an old friend’) – life has this uncanny way of throwing something I could never have expected. It’s like waiting for someone to pass the ball to Klose and keeping your eye on him, only to realize that Podolski came in from the left and scored while you were looking somewhere else.

And here’s the strange part: although it surprises you, or rather, takes a piss on the parade you imagined for yourself, life is very rarely surprising. In that, although its rarely what you thought it would be, it responds in the most mundane way ever. Things are not as good as you thought, nor as bad, they’re just average. You imagine yourself getting ecstatic for the A and despondent for the C, but heck, you get a B, and then what?

This post had a point. But um, I’m going to save face by getting all nerdy here – because I’m good at that. The brain loves making the individual feel important (either the hero or the martyr) because it’s an extended part of the whole self-preservation instinct. What the brain cannot stand, and consequently what most individuals can’t come to terms with is being ordinary, dispensable, not mattering, and being just another B in a huge crowd of B’s.

So hey, here’s to a higher level of self-awareness. I’m going to imagine myself never publishing a book, getting into an arranged marriage, falling out of love as often as in love, making as much money as the national average for my level of education, and driving the most commonplace car on the street. Because ordinary is not surprising, and one of the (many) ways to make sure life doesn’t catch you off guard is to plan for the routine. So simple no?

I’m not very good at saving face am I?

Oh look, behind you, near the couch! There's a surprise to distract you.