Last week was an incredibly fun week for us: 4 and a half days at Walt Disney World with our niece and nephew. It was fun to be a kid again and i think that was helped repeatedly by our low expectations. Certainly we were excited about the trip and spending time with the kids, but not having been there in over 18 years we didn't know what we didn't know, and every experience was new and exciting. This was most evident when we rode a ride for the first time. The first ride on the Expedition Everest coaster was unbelievable, the 7th time was flat-out boring. It was the same ride every time, yet our experience was totally different.
Although not surprising, what it does shows is that 'New' increases excitement and expectations exponentially. Unfortunately, just because it's new doesn't mean it will live up to those expectations. In fact, it got to a point that as we waited in line for a new ride we would purposely talk up how lame the ride would be just to be pleasantly surprised. Not living up to new expectations becomes a lot more frustrating when we're not just talking about a roller coaster.
But unlike the new and exciting unknown, i was unprepared for a melancholy feeling of a return to a work-a-day life in the cold, rainy mid-atlantic weather. Somehow the 'known' and the 'same' always manage to fall short of expectations. No matter how low. And that has something to do with what we take for granted, which i'll talk more about tomorrow in the Thanksgiving post.
Song of the Day
In honor of being able to break away from the whirring of day to day life and then be able to integrate back into it, the song of the day is the great new band The Joy Formidable's "Whirring".
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