Imagine you are a small kid, let’s say about 3 years old. Let’s also pretend that you have never heard of a roller coaster before, that no ever told you what a roller coaster is or what it’s purpose is.
You never heard that the idea of a roller coaster is to have fun. That the fun comes from not knowing exactly what will happen next and discovering how each turn is different from the last one. You never learned that when you are on a roller coaster, you expect it to be unexpected and you know that it will be an adventure.
Now let’s pretend that this 3 year old you somehow winds up riding on a roller coaster still with no idea what it is or what the purpose of it is. What do you think your experience riding the roller coaster will be? Probably pretty terrifying, right?
You would be wondering the whole time what is happening, what you were supposed to be doing and if it will ever stop going so fast and changing so much. You would probably be screaming for it to stop.
Isn’t that how a lot of people experience each day? They never heard that the idea of today is to have fun. That the fun comes from not knowing exactly what will happen next and discovering how each moment is different from the last one. That that IS the purpose of today.
Because they never heard this, they approach the ride trying to predict what will happen, always wondering what they are supposed to be doing and wondering if it will ever stop moving and changing so fast. Sometimes they even end up screaming for it to stop. Does this feel familiar?
What if we experimented going into the rest of the day with only one expectation:
Expect that each moment will be different from any other moment before and it will also be different from any that will come after it.
Then what if we accepted that our job is to do only one thing:
To discover how each moment is different?
What if we expect today to be unexpected and we know that it will be an adventure? How much more fun would that be? How much more productive, effective, attentive, smart and creative could we be without wasting our energy on trying to predict what will happen and wishing things would stop changing so much? What if instead, we just know the next moment will be different than we could expect and we simply put all our energy on discovering how each moment is different as it happens?
We might have a different experience of the phrase” “Today is a real roller coaster!”
-Andy