Expect the Unexpected

20 days until Christmas. 26 days until New Years. 43 days until my birthday. 172 days until Blossom. The clock of life constantly ticks away in my mind, tallying the days until the next extravaganza. I, the proud downloader of the countdown app "Big Day," find myself calculating how long I must wait before the future turns to present. I scribble numbers in the margins of my planner, put post-its on my bathroom mirror and circle calendar dates in crimson red. I even find myself counting down until an appropriate day to begin counting down. All in anticipation for the "Big Day." Well, in my case, a plethora of big days. My friends and I discuss weekend plans and make seasonal activity lists in hopes of creating the glamorous lifestyle we all envision. However, our favorite thespian once said, "Expectation is the root of all heartache." Shakespeare's morse code has never made more sense. By setting up expectations, we simply set ourselves up for disappointment. Anticipation, the most dangerous form of hope, grows in size the more we feed it. Expectancy lingers in small talk, plays like a movie in our minds and puts butterflies in our stomachs - only to let us down in the end. Sometimes, all the hype successfully amounts to our expectations. The countdown to Friday never fails, nor does the wait for Thanksgiving dinner. Most times, unfortunately, all the build up proves anticlimactic. After waiting for months, Rihanna's newest album failed to impress. My attempt at a making Frosty the Snowman after the season's first (and short-lived) snowfall ended pathetically. My latest order of Spinach con Queso at the Rusty Bucket had too much spinach and not enough queso - a colossal disappointment after the hours I spent salivating in anticipation. While we cannot tame optimism and excitement towards high expectations, we must understand their potential to dissatisfy. The allure of assumptions and the unknown distracts us from the joys of reality. I do not believe that expecting the best will always end badly. However, when things do not go as planned, we become blind to what good lies in front of us. If we live 300 days in the future, those 300 days leading up will blur together before we have time to appreciate them. But in case you wonder, t-184 days until summer.