Unexpected Pleasures

In my meandering through life, I often find that I dwell on the unexpected. Perhaps it's a feature of my line of work, where the unexpected sometimes carries unhappy baggage, that I spend far too much time wondering what unpleasant surprise lurks just around the corner. When I travel, as the plane sits on the runway ready for take off, I consider the probability that my luggage will be lost, that I will miss my connection in Moscow, or that the sleeping baby resting peacefully in his mother's arms in the seat next to me will turn out to have a temperament as bad as Donald Trump's and will end up shrieking throughout the duration of the flight. And, of course, I expect they will unexpectedly run out of the entree of the meal I want when they hand the last one to the passenger next to me, if they even serve food at all.

The unexpected. It fills us with dread, because the possibilities are endless.  There are terrorists and tornadoes and blizzards and politicians and food poisoning and invasions of mice in our cupboards and mosquitoes and drunken drivers and power outages and broken elevators and surprise visits from the in-laws and bee stings and daylong marathons of Duck Dynasty and the prospect of a certain Presidential candidate sitting next to the nuclear button one fine day. It is no wonder we are an anxious and fearful group in this modern world.

And the unexpected is unrelenting as I discovered on my recent trip to Bishkek this past week. My meeting at work was delayed for a day, just before I arrived there, throwing the plans I had for a mini-vacation into disarray. I sat grumpily in the meeting, when it finally arrived, and I wondered what unexpected misery would land in my lap--perhaps the request to write a five-page memo throughout the remainder of my scheduled rest?

The first sign that the unexpected has two faces was a shocking one: our lengthy meeting actually ended ten minutes ahead of schedule, a happening in my organization as rare as a full solar eclipse. As I departed the conference room and dashed down the stairs leading out of the building, that's when I could feel it. I could sense the warm glow of unexpected pleasures.

So, this past weekend I still dwelt on the unexpected, but instead on those surprises which provide our lives small and humble joys.

One unexpected pleasure was the delicious warm weather in Bishkek, away from the mountain chill.

I also enjoyed the unexpected pleasure of dinner with a colleague I had never really spent much time with during my stay in Kyrgyzstan. It is a joy to share simple conversation over a fine meal and to discover how much common ground one shares with another.

And I had the unexpected pleasure to share another dinner, this time with a colleague whom I know quite well. The pleasure of catching up with news of work and life after weeks of laboring in different cities carries with it a comfortable happiness that one doesn't quite expect.  And the feeling I get after devouring a delicious pizza and a drinking a glass of intensely cold beer is always a surprise, because one never expects such simple things to carry so much feeling.

The entire weekend there were no mosquitoes, no mice in the cupboards, no daylong marathons of Duck Dynasty. I found only unexpected pleasures of rest and meditation and calmness and walks along Bishkek's boulevards and finding jars of peanut butter to purchase and Emails left unanswered and the knowledge gained that the unexpected has two faces and the realization of which face should capture my greatest attention.