Expecting Good

"Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me." ~Carl Sandburg

We each have this tendency to go through life expecting bad things to happen to us. We figure that when times are good, something bad is about to happen. And when things are going bad, we expect them to continue to go bad. It is a self defeating attitude that gets you no where.

What if you expected good things to happen? What if encountering an elephant on a bus were a good thing and not bad? What if you looked beyond the rough exterior of another person and found something good?

Take the story of Simon Cowell. Most know him by his prickly persona on American Idol and the UK’s X Factor, which has made Simon Cowell richer than Midas.

Yet if one were to expect the unexpected, underneath the seeming brusque exterior is actually a kind and generous gentleman. Back in 2008, Simon saw the story of a three-year-old cancer patient and family in a video on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He decided quietly to help. The family had been traveling 100 miles per day for their daughter’s radiation treatments and was financially at a dead end.

Simon stepped in and gave the girl’s family enough money to completely pay off their mortgage and allow them to focus their efforts on fighting the disease. He credited Oprah with teaching him to enjoy giving and said, “I never knew that doing good could feel so good.”

The unexpected good that we find from giving, the unexpected good we find from looking beyond the outer exterior can bring new light to everything. The flat tire you get may be placing you in opportunity to meet someone that can change your life. That painful divorce may be opening a door to meeting someone so wonderful. A job loss could be a gateway to starting that business you always wanted to.

We have to begin to expect the good within the unexpected. All that appears bad on the outside is not always bad on the inside. We'll get what we expect in most cases. If we expect the bad all of the time, then it is likely that which we will find. But to start expecting something good in most everything will begin to yield better things.

Expect the unexpected and expect that it will be good.