Life Is Full Of Surprises. That Should Not Be Surprising.

​I apologized to one of my son's for something the other day. In that apology I told him, you know, when I die, there may be people who will reflect on my brokenness. And I'm okay with that. I've never hid from my brokenness. But I hope you, my son, will simply remember that I never quit.

I never quit showing up willing to deal with whatever might come my way in the day ahead.

All my life I have watched a world try to master its control over the outcomes of life. To become all knowing. Because once you fully control and know the future, you are fully prepared to deal with it.

To survive it and thrive in it.

While it's true that we have certainly made some intellectual gains as a culture over my lifetime, have we really made any gains at all in being able to control the future? I mean, as an individual reading this, are you any more certain about what tomorrow will bring your way than you were thirty years ago?

I mean, REALLY certain?

I am not.

And that's okay. Because I learned long ago the secret to life isn't knowing the future but being willing to tackle with everything you have the unknowns that will inevitably come with it. Because that is the most predictable thing about the future: you really have no idea what it holds.

It is wise, certainly, to plan for the future. But it is wiser yet to grow strong and persistent enough to tackle a future that doesn't show up according to your plan.

Too often, we get set back weeks, years, even a lifetime lamenting a future that didn't show up looking the way the future was supposed to look. But the reality is, an unexpected future isn't a surprise, it is life. An unexpected future isn't a reason to quit, but an invitation to take newfound strength into a future that will NEVER arrive as expected.

I love hearing people's resilience stories. Stories of how they kept going when life tried to talk them out of it. Those are stories I can relate to. Find inspiration in.

I find those stories more useful to me than the stories of people who've created lives that come with no surprises. Because the reality is, those aren't stories at all, they are fairy tales.

Surprises don't upend life, they define it. The less we understand this, the more at risk we are for the upending.

I expect that unexpected challenges will show up in my life this week. I also expect that will make something unexpected out of them.

That is my life.

That is resilience.