Guest Post by Edward Curtin
Despite calendars and clocks and all the mental gymnastics we use to control life and time, surprises are at the heart of existence. This may seem like a truism, but if so, it is one of those truths we often avoid in our desire for stability and the quelling of anxiety.
Our expectations, a form of knowledge based on the past, are efforts to avoid pain and the joy of the new. They are often scarecrows to frighten away reality, as Ortega y Gassett put it. Habits of mind meant to forget that life is an experiment yet to be tried or known; that tomorrow is always unknown country. That death is the greatest surprise of all.
The English psychoanalyst Adam Philips writes in Side Effects:
Continue reading “The Unexpected”
