I always wanted to surf. Maybe it was the Beach Boys or the Gidget movies, but I often imagined myself riding a big wave. My chance came one afternoon while sunbathing on Black’s Beach. It was the local nudist beach, but I was 22 and unconcerned with clothes. So was the cute guy who walked up to me while I was all greased up with baby oil.
“Hey! Wanna go surfing with me?” he asked.
“I’d love to,” I said, “but I don’t know how.”
“Come on. It’ easy,” he said. “I’ll teach you.”
To his credit, he tried but I was hopeless. I was a great swimmer and had no trouble catching a wave. Problem was, every time I caught one, I either slid off belly first or tried to stand and slid off sideways. I was slicker than a butter-basted turkey. Besides, it wasn’t what I expected.
I had the same experience with skiing. My ski instructor grew impatient with me. My legs kept sliding into the splits. Each time he would lift me up from behind and say, “Now this time, keep your legs together!” Each time I would start to stride with one leg and inevitably it just kept going. It hardly matched the movies I’d seen where skiers swooshed magically through the snow.
Now that my body is too broken to do either one it occurs to me that I never pursued either sport for a similar reason: I didn’t like the sharp ends of the surfboard or the sharp ends of the ski poles. They scared me. This rationale may seem ludicrous, but we humans are differentially sensitive. What might terrify me may well exhilarate you.
Our expectations so influence our experiences that our expectations often become our experiences. Such was the famous case of the construction worker and the 6-inch nail. He fell from a scaffold, landing smack onto a nail which pierced straight through his leather boot. He was carried from the scene screaming in pain to a hospital. When the doctors removed his boot, they discovered the nail had not pierced his foot at all but merely passed between his toes. So, what was he screaming about? His perceived pain.
Lately, I’ve been counseling a young couple where the wife has such high expectations of marriage that her husband doesn’t’ stand a chance. He could carry her on his back up a mountain and she’d complain he hadn’t brought the right fizzy water. Today I asked her, “Why not just enjoy his company?’ “Oh,” she replied, “I hadn’t thought of that.”