SURPRISE TACTICS
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love surprise parties, and those who hate them.
I can relate to both points of view. On one side of the coin, could there be a more tangible token of love and affection than toiling in secret to prepare a celebration for a beloved friend or relative’s birthday or anniversary? You might say that the same work would go into the party if it wasn’t a surprise, and in a way you’d be right.
But there’s something about keeping a secret that lends an extra dimension. The heightened suspense, and the desire to make the surprise perfect for its recipient, adds an edge that keeps the whole project simmering constantly on the front burner of our minds.
On the flip side, a surprise party can catch its guest of honor on the wrong foot. She can end up looking a little foolish, or at least not at her best. Some people prefer to celebrate their birthday or anniversary on their own terms, ensuring conditions they approve and opportunities to look their best. The element of surprise, instead of being a bonus, seems to them an unnecessary and undesirable complication. They want to know what’s coming, so they can be prepared.
Surprise parties are optional, but there are other kinds of surprises which are most definitely not so. I’m talking about words or actions that seem to pop up out of nowhere, just when you least expect it. When someone you thought you knew well, including yourself, says or does something… astonishing. Let’s look at a few examples.
There are some traits that are right out there, and others that tend to lurk. Courage is a lurker. Curled up in a person’s deepest recesses, it waits for the right moment to show itself. It may be so generally well hidden that, when it appears, it takes everyone by surprise. I think I once mentioned on these pages an incident in which a father was standing with his two small children when a large dog of ferocious appearance began barking and racing right at them. Without taking so much as a second to think it over, the father pushed the kids behind him and planted himself in front of his children to protect them. (Fortunately, the attack was averted. Still, a hero is a hero!)
Had anyone asked that father beforehand if he was afraid of large, ferocious dogs, especially one that seemed intent on tearing anyone in the vicinity limb from limb, he would have replied fervently in the affirmative. Yet when courage was demanded, he surprised himself by producing it in spades. The ingredients were apparently there all along, waiting for the just the right confluence if circumstances (love for his children, fear for their safety, no one else around to save them) to turn an ordinary young man into a superhero.
Wartime reminiscences abound with similar tales of unexpected courage under fire. Both soldiers and civilians may find themselves acting in ways which would have seemed, both to others and to themselves, completely uncharacteristic of them in ordinary times. Minds not usually known for their agility can suddenly start moving at warp speed, as details are noted, plans laid and dramatic escapes hatched. It seems that we just don’t know what we’re capable of until we have to do it!
Even more than courage, we can surprise ourselves with an ingenuity we never suspected we owned. Some people, of course, are naturally resourceful. No matter what life throws at them, they’ll figure out a solution and land on their feet. But there are others who don’t come across as especially ingenious or capable. In ordinary times, they muddle through just like the rest of us. And yet, when a moment comes demanding extraordinary quick-wittedness, they can find themselves making split-second decisions with instincts honed to uncanny sharpness.
It’s not only in wartime or other extraordinary circumstances that we may surprise ourselves or be surprised by others. Have you ever been blown away by someone’s unexpectedly wise advice or ultra-sensitive understanding? Someone whom you thought you knew, and whom you filed away in your mind as no more acute than the average person, can astonish with the occasional flash of insight or intuition.
It’s as if all the wisdom she’s been absorbing and storing inside for years suddenly rises to the surface when it’s needed to help someone. All the inchoate intuition, all the lessons learned and quietly filed away, all the personal experiences mulled over and collated, can float up to the surface under just the right conditions.
Someone whose understanding you may have categorized as middling at best can turn out to harbor seeds of greatness, translated into pearls of wisdom.
Bottom Feeders
Unfortunately, we can also surprise ourselves and others in the opposite direction. It’s a source of deep personal disappointment when we find ourselves reacting badly to a situation. When the words we toss out are harsh or inappropriate or foolish. When the unexpected emotions expressed are negative ones, drawn from a reservoir of long-standing pain or resentment.
Sometimes it takes a painful encounter or an unexpectedly raw comment to bring to light festering feelings that should have been identified and uprooted long before. Let’s not wait until our buttons are pushed to produce a nasty surprise!
The vast physical universe around us holds no end of surprises. Scientists, physicists, geologists and biologists can toil to uncover those secrets all their lives, and still only scratch the surface. The human psyche is no less complex or wondrous… and no less capable of surprising. It’s never a good idea to write anyone off, including ourselves.
No matter how well you may think you know someone, how easily you think you can predict their reactions, or how undazzling your opinion of their (or your own) mental capacity or strength of character, people will sometimes take you by surprise. From unsuspected depths they’ll dredge up qualities, both good and bad, that no one ever suspected of lurking there. Sometimes themselves, least of all!
Some of the deeper, darker bottom feeders we’d prefer to keep right where they are. I’m talking about the ugly feelings, flaws, and weaknesses that we’d like to relegate to the lowest places, out of sight and out of mind. If those grotesque sea monsters do manage to jar loose from their moorings and burst through into the light of day, it’s our job to swallow our disappointment and shame, and then do the work of subduing and banishing them.
But often enough, it’s the other things that pop out. The wonderful things that we had no notion were there. Things to astonish and delight us with the richness of their wisdom, or ingenuity, or sensitivity, or courage. Things that have grown in the dark from seeds we were hardly aware of planting.
Things that can turn anyone, including our humble little selves, into superheroes!
