As a woman was preparing dinner, one evening, there was a knock at the door. When she opened the door, a gentleman said he was looking for some odd jobs. He asked her if there was anything he could do. She said, “Can you paint?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m a rather good painter.”
“Well,” she said, “there are two gallons of green paint there and a brush, and there’s a porch out back that needs to be painted. Please do a good job. I’ll pay you what the job is worth.”
He said, “Fine. I’ll be done quickly.”
She went back to her dinner preparations, and didn’t think much more about it until there was another knock at the door. She went, and by the looks of his clothes, he had indeed been painting.
She said, “Did you finish the job?”
He said, “Yes.”
She said, “Did you do a good job?”
He said, “Yes. But lady, there’s one thing I’d like to point out to you. That’s not a Porsche back there. That’s a Mercedes.”
That woman definitely received a surprise.
Sometimes we like to receive surprises — sometimes we don’t. Especially bad news surprises. But our society has cultivated the notion that most of the time, surprises tend to be good news, and happy or celebratory behaviors. People plan surprise birthday parties, surprise proposals, and surprise travel arrangements. Sometimes those surprises work out — sometimes they backfire.
The world is pretty much divided into three groups of people: those who love surprises, those who hate surprises, and those who tolerate certain kinds of surprises.
What if I told you that surprises are actually good for us? Good for our mental health. Good for our emotional health. Good for the world. Well — it’s true.
Surprise is one of the seven universal emotions and it arises when we encounter sudden and unexpected sounds or movements. Dr. Paul Ekman writes: “As the briefest of the universal emotions, its function is to focus our attention on determining what is happening and whether or not it is dangerous.”
If you are like me, you want to know what those other universal emotions are.
The seven universal emotions are: Anger, Contempt, Disgust, Enjoyment, Fear, Sadness and Surprise
These seven emotions are actually ways to prepare us to deal with important events without having to think about them. These emotions happen to us automatically — we don’t choose to feel them. So — these seven universal emotions are felt by all humans — transcending language, region, culture, and ethnic differences.
Surprise is an emotion, because in the moment or two before we figure out what is occurring, before we switch to another emotion, or no emotion, surprise itself can feel good or bad.
Let’s take a moment and talk about what surprise looks like:
Here is a beautiful image of surprise. The eyebrows, eyes, and mouth play key roles in registering surprise. The eyebrows are raised, the upper eyelids are raised, while the lower eyelids remain neutral, the jaw drops down. There is often an audible gasp — a quick, momentary intake of breath with surprise. Sometimes people bring their hands up to shield their face, or they step backwards from the surprising object.
As I was preparing this service, I watched many videos of children receiving the surprise Christmas or birthday present of a puppy or kitten. In every video it seemed like at least ONE of the children burst into tears following the initial shock. I finally had to stop watching them and walk away, because every time one of the kids cried, I started crying. I did, however, pick out my favorite so you could watch it and cry also. As you watch, notice the silence following the moment of surprise, and then the switch to the next emotional reaction — tears, smiles, screams, hugs of thanks, etc.
Surprise passes quickly as we figure out what is happening. Think about a time in which you were surprised. You didn’t know what was going on. Why are all of my friends gathered together in this room, right now? How do they know each other? Who asked them to come here? Where are their cars? Why didn’t I know this was going to happen? OH — this is a surprise party. They all came here because someone planned this. Their cars must be down the street. This is_________ . And then the next emotion comes in — this is….cool or maddening, or oh my gosh, I have on a dirty shirt, now I feel stupid….oh this is amazing — these people all care about me.
Authors Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger have carefully detailed the four stages of the surprise response:
FREEZE — when we are stopped in our tracks because of the unexpected. (Why is my son who lives four hundred miles away sitting in the restaurant I just entered?)
FIND —when we get hooked into trying to understand what’s going on/how this happened. We tend to ask questions in this stage. (Is this just a coincidence or did someone actually plan for him to be here, because this just happens to be my birthday?)
SHIFT — when we begin to shift our perspectives, based on conflicting findings. This takes place when we literally shift what we believed. (Wait, my birthday didn’t go unnoticed — I mattered — these people came. They must like me. I didn’t know they cared that much.)
SHARE —when we feel the pull to share our surprises with others. Oddly listed as part of the surprise response, apparently the need to recount the surprise helps us to savor it even more.
Luna and Renninger tell us that surprise is important, because “It turns out that surprise works on the dopamine system in our brains, helping us to focus our attention and inspiring us to look at our situation in new ways. Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger, Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected
While Luna and Renninger accept that some people just don’t like surprises, they encourage us to be more open to them and to try to develop ways to invite more surprise into our lives. Among the strategies they suggest, are mixing things up a bit in our routines, and developing a more intentional desire to delight other people by giving them small, unexpected gifts or surprises. Doing something nice without explaining why creates mystery and happiness. It’s a form of surprising someone. They suggest that we all need to stop protecting ourselves from the uncertainty or fear of surprise and get out there to engineer more of it.
“Not only will surprise bring more vitality to our lives, it will also lead to improvements in society. By embracing and engineering surprise you can make our whole world richer. You can inspire wonder, connection, vulnerability, growth and creativity.” Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger, Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected
It might seem like those are impossible tasks during these difficult times, however, small, unexpected gifts and surprises are still very possible even in the midst of a pandemic.
Like the gentleman in the opening story, I recently did my own surprise painting. A few days ago, I finally got around to painting our mailbox post — after planning to do it for the past year. I was dressed for the job, got the paint out, and painted our post. That task only took me about fifteen minutes, and only used up about one tenth of the paint can. Well, I figured — I’m already sweating and I have a lot more paint, I think I’ll paint my next door neighbor’s mailbox post. She had a stroke last year, so I know she’ll appreciate not having to paint her post. When I finished hers, I moved to the next mailbox in line — the guy who lived there had just helped us move two refrigerators onto and off a U-Haul truck, this would be a nice surprise for him, I thought. And after that, I just kept going — from mailbox post to mailbox post — thinking to myself — I hope these neighbors don’t get mad at me for painting their mailbox post - I mean, I couldn’t really imagine any of them would come running out of their houses and yell at me to stop painting their mailbox post…..because well — who would do that? By the time I reached the bottom of the quart of paint, I had painted twelve mailbox posts. As I was delighting in the surprises I was leaving behind, the owner of the last mailbox post pulled into his driveway just as I was leaving. “Oh, what a great surprise, he said — would you like some tomatoes and cucumbers from my garden for your painting?” He surprised me. I trudged home with my empty paint can and a bag of tomatoes and cucumbers, and a full heart, hoping that I had engineered a surprise that improved not only the appearance of our street, but also made our world better, while connecting me even closer to my neighbors. Amen.
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