Don’t hate surprises. They’re the stuff of life
NOTHING tells you you’re cherished more than a well planned surprise, writes Angela Mollard.
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ON my 30th birthday the man I loved woke me at dawn, told me to get dressed and drove me to the airport.
He wouldn’t tell me where we were going.
How often in life do you stand in front of a departures board not knowing where you’ll wake up the following morning? Amsterdam? Paris? Bangkok? Cape Town? Not only did I not know my destination, I didn’t know that the surprise would turn out to be one of the most memorable moments of my life.
“Here”, he said, handing over a wrapped gift.
Inside was a guide book to New York.
Recently I told my daughters the story. Of how we drank champagne on the plane and danced in the autumn leaves in Central Park and walked over Brooklyn Bridge. I told them about eating chocolate cake while wearing a Yankees beanie and taking a dawn ferry to Staten Island.
“I hope someone loves me enough to surprise me like that one day,” said my eldest.
“More importantly,” I told her. “I hope you love someone enough to do that for them.”
Surprises are gold to our souls. They’re the unexpected sprinkle of glitter in lives that stretch out as uniform and grey as cement. In a world stripped of unpredictability where everything from your journey time to who you date to what you eat in a restaurant can be researched and pre-examined, surprises are the elixir of another era.
Even that once great unknown — the gender of the baby growing in your belly — can be revealed within weeks of the wonder that is conception. Less joyous, DNA testing can now reveal the disease that will likely kill you.
And yet surprises stay with us long past the shriek, the mouth clasp and the tears that accompany them. Whether through happenstance, serendipity or good planning, a surprise is life at its shiniest; the clearest evidence that we’ve been lucky or that we’re loved.
When my youngest daughter was three she enjoyed nothing more than dressing up. One day she’d pretend to be a teacher with a clipboard, the next she’d be a fairy leaving magic flower circles in the garden. One evening her grandparents flew in late on a surprise visit bringing with them a tiny wedding dress complete with veil, white plastic shoes and a bouquet made with silk flowers. They crept into her bedroom and hung it on the wardrobe door so it would be the first thing she saw in the morning.
I woke at 6.30 to find her next to my bed barely able to speak, such was her excitement. Pulling me downstairs, her hands were shaking and her face was a picture of incredulity and joy. She wore the dress every day for months, telling anyone who commented exactly how she’d received it.
Technology, while helpful, has eaten up so many of life’s surprises. Weather apps mean we rarely get caught in the rain, Trip Advisor shows us pictures and gives rankings to our holiday destinations before we’ve even left home and a Fitbit will tell us how many kilometres we’ll have to burn if we want to eat that cheesecake. Potential suitors now come with a full resume which can act like emotional Roundup, killing off chemistry, curiosity and chance.
Yet surprise brings us so much pleasure and anchors us in the present. So many blokes moan about the cost of flowers yet most women I know are delighted by an unexpected bouquet. Likewise a good April Fool, going fishing, cracking open a fortune cookie, watching kids on Christmas morning and slicing into an avocado and finding it’s ripe, all bring a hit of dopamine.
What’s more, surprise is good for us. Tania Luna, author of Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected, says surprise helps us learn, improves our romantic relationships, makes us flexible and improves our mental health. “When we invite surprise into our lives on a regular basis, we elevate our mood,” says Luna. What’s more, we build a tolerance for uncertainty, which in turn reduces anxiety.
While we shower children with surprises such as treasure hunts and lucky dips, and introduce them to stories where a golden ticket will get you into a chocolate factory or a wardrobe will open to Narnia or Darth Vader will turn out to be Luke Skywalker’s father, we rarely create such joys in adulthood.
Fortunately I come from a family that excels in surprises. A couple of weeks ago I had a party for a significant birthday but didn’t think to invite my family who all live overseas. They all sent messages and I thought no more of it until I turned round to find my mum and stepdad walking down my hallway with a photo album filled with pictures from my life. After much shrieking, they told me to turn round and there were my two brothers. They’d crept up the side path and were standing on my back deck. One had been travelling since 3am; the other had flown from Japan. I’ve rarely felt so cherished.
As we enter the season of obscene gifting why not, instead, put thought and care into a surprise. There’s no better way of showing someone you love that they matter.