Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly. Now notice what happens when I say the word “surprise”! Some people love the unexpected and some loath and dread the unknown, or as Henry James said more poetically: “ There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.” Chances are, whichever camp you fall into, when you hear the word you’ll feel a quickening. Something will change physiologically.
One of the best ways to feel alive is to travel, whether literally, or via books, film, dance, art or music. Anything that takes us out of a patterned perception provides a chance to create new neural connections in the brain and to raise the heart rate enough to sense that we’re not in the same old place.
In my therapy room is a carpet with squares that are not quite regular. The edges are wavey and jagged. Some people have told me it makes them angry. Others feel fascination. In any case, I don’t have an agenda for the carpet. It’s just in the environment and the responses show us that someone is alive, and perceiving, with something to process. Mostly it takes them by surprise.
Surprise has some close cousins with whom we can enjoy hanging out. They are “risk” and gratitude. Surprises sometimes nudge us to take more risk and more risk-taking in turn rewards us with surprises–often new insights, opportunities, beauty, connections. These provoke a state of gratitude, if we are open to the gifts of newness, quirkiness, irregularity, sudden incongruities, concealed humor and more. I try to live my life not to expect surprise, which could be a form of addiction to adrenaline, but to be open to the freshness that the unforeseen brings to life.
I invite you, in this moment, to take inventory of your pulse, thoughts, heart rate, mood, body sensations. Then look at the pictures below. When you are done, repeat the inventory and appreciate any physiological changes, alterations of mood, new insights or overall state of being.
Are you still feeling the same way? Are you alive? What did you notice?
