Anticipation

Dateline: Christmas, 2015 

Anyway you cut it, Christmas is about anticipation.  Yes, of course, there was Simeon in the temple and millennia of Hebrew pilgrims who looked longingly forward to the coming of a “Deliverer”. 

But Christmas has become a lot more generalized, not to mention commercialized. 

The delightful presentation of “A Kentucky Christmas” at the Woodford Theater centered on the word “Expectant”.  This theme highlighted the anticipation of seasonal changes, the blanketing of sleeping hills by snow, Christmas presents, treats to eat, and the engagement of friends and family in celebration.  It also included two mothers-to-be, anticipating first newborns. 

Hope springs eternal!  It’s what drives us onward through even the most dire circumstances.  Remove Hope, and you take the spirit out of Life and Living. 

Hope, expectancy and anticipation derive from many sources.  Perhaps not most of all from the daily news.  But often from small things: From sharing; from random acts of kindness; from stories of heroes and heroines; from stories of Unlikely Champions; from role models; from each new sunrise; from joyful experiences to be re-experienced; from things fresh from the oven; from worthy projects completed, from “raindrops on roses …”; from birthdays; from paydays; from small affirmations … 

Sometimes, of course, they come from completely unjustified and irrational “Dreamings” – like “Someday, my knight will ride by on his white horse and take me off to happily ever after.”  Then there’s the “Force” in Star Wars, magic in Harry Potter, the deus ex machina from Greek tragedy, gambling in the casinos, and diehard UK football fans ever yearning for a “breakout season” above 0.500! 

But who among us won’t cling to the unjustified and irrational when everything else is going down the tubes? 

It’s worth noting that irrational and unjustified “expectancy” never hurt anyone who busied himself tilling the soil and planting seeds of possibility. 

Perhaps most of all, Christmas gives us the challenge and possibility of revisioning the life-changing, transformative progression: 

IMPOSSIBLE to IMPROBABLE to POSSIBLE to PROBABLE to INEVITABLE

 

 

We could start by choosing Something Like a Star:

 

  

 “... So when at times, our paths unblazed

                                                Allow us to digress too far,

                                                We may choose something like a star

                                                To stay our minds on and be staid.”

                                                                                    Adapted from Robert Frost 

The good news is that the “Force of Life” is moving ever onward.  Though it may rain in our own backyard, the sun – the Earth Star – WILL rise somewhere tomorrow, and keep rising.  And, though there is an ebb and flow, so do the tides …

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;”
Brutus, Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218–224

William Shakespeare 

Most important of all, we don’t have to deal with life’s challenges alone. 

“Life is inherently disruptive.  You just have to adapt.  There’s no secret hack, [no magic], no work-around, no pro tip for that.  Except maybe this: to manage the personal hurricanes that will blow your way, you’ll need aid and comfort from [significant others].  And that’s when a little … codependence can be a good thing.”   Susanna Schrobsdorff (TIME, Dec. 14, 2015, p. 90) 

Zig Ziglar used to remind us that the fellow saddled with shoveling the most manure is closest to the pony. 

Remain ever expectant!  The Life Force is moving.  Tap into it.  Manure may hit the fan by the truck load.  But keep shoveling, till the soil, plant premium seeds, find ways to engage and help others, keep your vision “star-bound”, and you will have more than reason enough to anticipate good things happening.  Here’s wishing you all the very best of “good things happening” this Special Season, and wishing you a Very Happy New Year ahead!  Quartermaster