Anticipation

Is there anything more delicious than anticipation? There is just something wonderful about knowing that something really good is out there somewhere in the future just waiting for you to catch up. Anticipation is a heart racing, keeping the best secret in the world, just can't help feeling happy and hopeful kind of feeling. It's one of the best feelings in the world.

I worry sometimes that I enjoy anticipating things more than I enjoy the actual event, but since that only happens sometimes, it's a minor worry. There are a lot of things in this world that are rather anti-climactic, but that doesn't mean that they're not good. I'm a dreamer, and in the world of dreams, anything is possible. People can set aside their petty meanness and selfishness and care more for others than they do for themselves. Everyone can cooperate. Assemble it yourself items can almost fall into place with minimal effort and a tremendous sense of personal accomplishment. Every light on the tree works, and the cords untangle easily. There's no such thing as a bad hair day. Everyone loves everything I've cooked. Of course, the cooking goes easily and everyone pitches in to help clean up. Boy, do I know how to dream big.

It's hard for me to separate anticipation from Christmas. Childhood linked the two together for my lifetime. Oh, those final weeks before Christmas when the stack of presents under the tree just got bigger. There was something sweet and new and wonderful coming out of the kitchen every day, and this only happened at Christmas. There were so many things to look forward to. Being in the Christmas pageant, Charlie Brown, Rudolph and Frosty coming on TV, wearing a pretty Christmas dress to Handel's Messiah every year and getting a small book of puzzles and a candy cane to keep me quiet during the performance, and the hopeful, dreadful wondering if I'd been good enough to make the "nice" list. Oh, I was definitely hooked.

The reality was tripping and stumbling through my part in the pageant and hearing the audience snigger, having that pretty dress scratch me in such a way that wiggling brought down the reproach of my parents and some of those mysterious presents being not just socks, but tube socks. I couldn't give up the anticipation habit though. That rush of possibility still is just too much. As I've gotten older and more realistic, I know the real world will let me down. People have their own agendas which don't necessarily coincide with mine. I'm faced every day with my own lack of talent and ability in areas which I wish were more developed. I know that part of life is just gutting it out.

Yet, there is always possibility. Anticipation is inexorably tied with hope and faith. When everything seems grim, and my life seems stuck in some temporal loop where I'm perpetually lonely, overstressed and broke, hope will come through and say, "There's more than this." Faith speaks up and says, "It's coming." Those voices give me the courage to dream again, to plan for something different, to put my effort behind making the changes and to see the possibility of them happening. Anticipation is what bubbles up inside me, giving me the energy to keep going until things do change. And they do. Sick people get well. People find better jobs. They take trips. They make friends. We can stumble through our lives and not notice how much better things are until it hits us how much has changed. Then we know that the anticipation was solidly founded and that hope and faith were not a joke.

I need to look forward to something. When I lack that, I quit moving and just drown in depression. There are wonderful things out there waiting for me to catch up. I don't know exactly what they are, but they're there, and I'm coming for them.

Sunday Scribblings, anticipation,