Trask Avenue

Take a moment and reach back to your childhood. Remember waiting for that special thing to happen, that special thing which you knew was going to happen. Remember how time seemed to crawl like a slug through thick, unforgiving mud. Remember the feeling of waiting waiting waiting for it to arrive, then the unmistakable sensation somersaulting in your tummy like the Flying Wallendas which accompanied the wait. Maybe it was a holiday or birthday. Perhaps it was visiting a fun place, like your favorite cousin’s home or a ballpark. It could have been receiving the perfect goodie you ordered from a magazine through the mail. Sometimes you knew the exact date it would happen, other times it was unknown, circling above the clouds like a hidden eagle. Either way, the wait felt endless and you were consumed with this paradoxically excruciating and delightful fervor called anticipation.

It is tough recapturing that sense of childhood anticipation, isn’t it? Somewhere along the road it slipped into a ditch. Or perhaps we simply adjusted to life. Adulthood brings a radically different version of anticipation. Upcoming joy and is replaced by a harbinger of trouble. Not many of us still get jazzed waiting for a package in the mail, but we certainly endure anticipation’s dark side whenever the phone rings in the middle of the night or we await the results of that medical test. When was it that our perception flipped? Was there a precise moment when anticipation turned from a promise of future pleasure to an expectation of something sinister?

Life is easy, if not for the relentless complications. It rarely follows an orderly path and will throw each of us into the ditch at some point. As kids we don’t think about that kind of stuff. Each new day is an adventure, an exploration into the mysterious and exciting. When you know in advance a mysterious and exciting thing is coming anticipation washes over you like the waters at Lourdes. It is sparked by the certain knowledge happiness sits at the end of anticipation’s ride. You are climbing that first hill on the roller coaster – nervous, eager, thrilled. The iron bar keeps you snuggly safe and when the top is reached you experience that divine, but fleeting instant when anticipation and deliverance occupy the same space. Of course the payoff was never as delicious as imagined, but it was pretty sweet.

Sometimes I wonder if we would all be better served by trying, if only on occasion, to joyfully anticipate the good yet to come. They may not be gifts wrapped in colorful packaging or exotic purchases delivered through the complex workings of the postal service, but they don’t need to be. As you read this think about the people you will be seeing soon and anticipate your mutual warm greetings. Consider that after work trip to the market and anticipate the pleasant reaction of the cashier when you deliver a sincere compliment and a smile. Bask in the anticipation of knowing when you are tired a warm bed is there for you. The glorious power of anticipation does not need to turn dark as the world goes about its dirty business. It simply needs to be nudged towards the light.
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