Unpredictability

On deadline day for November 7, you would have found me in the usual tug-of-war with suitable subjects. Unpredictability won. That’s a broad concept for one tiny column, but while it posed in the winner’s circle, I typed a few of my rambling thoughts about it..

“Unpredictable” tends to have synonyms leaning toward the negative. How sad to gauge everything in life that way. Not much for me has gone according to mostly last-minute planning, even with good intentions, so hanging around to see developments unfolding is intriguing. It’s cliche, but it’s like watching a movie of my life or writing a memoir. I don’t really know what’s ahead and I’m not ready for the ending.

Not many of us are fans of novels with predictable plots or premiers with lines we can say before the characters do. Boring. Give me a reason to sit on the edge of my seat or to keep my brain churning out possibilites.

I’ve had sad and bad times, yes, but change is a constant and resilience plays a role in managing situations that don’t have control panels. When facing hard times, I lean on faith in better outcomes even with unknown hows or whens and no answers on the horizon to the whys.

This issue of the PN will be distributed after our general election. Talk about UNPREDICTABLE! Who can really say with one hundred percent accuracy how any of it will go, or when? Or how ones we consider friends and neighbors will react? There will be lucky - or unlucky - guesses, depending on which side of that fence one sits. With so much news to wrestle truth from, it’s unnerving and seemingly impossible to call.

Predictability has its place, for sure. I like my car to get me where I’m going safely and without fuss. It’s also nice when my laptop keyboard doesn’t switch layouts mid-project. All things mechanical in my life need to keep on keeping on, because one CAN accurately predict my reaction if they don’t. It isn’t becoming.