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I was blithely scanning my feeds the other day when Roger von Oeck’s post Be Willing to Be Led Astray resurrected (eek! it’s alive!) an interesting memory from the ol’ gray matter. (Hmmm, is it ‘grey’, or ‘gray’? I never can remember. Oh, well, in my case it’s probably more like mauve.)

His premise, “expect the unexpected or you won’t find it”, comes from our old buddy Heraclitus, and raises some very good points. Do yourself a favor and read it. It’s OK, I’ll wait…

Hey, you’re back! For me, the “money quote” is this one:

“When I’m in a hurry or narrowly focused on a task, I have a hard time adopting this mindset. That’s because I tend to filter out information that strikes me as irrelevant. Conversely, when I’m relaxed or playful, there’s a greater probability that unexpected things flow my way.”

Ain’t that the truth! But I’m warning you now - by adopting this attitude, you might accidently change your life! I say this from experience because that’s exactly what happened to me…

A long time ago (but NOT in a galaxy far, far away – it was actually just the next one over), my grandmother took me downtown to pick out what I wanted for Christmas. Since I was only about 5 or 6, going downtown was an adventure in itself; but this trip – ah, this trip was to pick out something for MEEEEEE! (Being a kid brings a sort of “center of the universe” aspect to everything, don’t you think?)

Anyway, we went into the toy department, and my eyes immediately fastened on this shiny toy airplane with a rubber band motor. I was in love! “That’s what I want!” I cried. But then my grandmother (bless her heart) did something really unexpected – she said “No, you don’t want that.”

Was she kidding? Of COURSE I wanted that! My life would simply not be complete without it! There was NO WAY I was leaving the store without it! I HAD to have… well, you get the picture, right? I basically threw a tantrum because she was standing in the way of what I had focused on.

Here’s where it gets good, though.

She led me over to another part of the store, where they had model kits of airplanes, ships and all kinds of other stuff on display. “This is something you might like,” she said. “How about a model airplane kit instead? You like to make things, don’t you? You can build it yourself!”

(Actually, the truth was, I was good at taking things apart - radios, alarm clocks, that sort of stuff. Putting them together - well, not so much.)

An amazing thing happened then. As I looked at the many different model kits of planes, ships and other cool stuff, my eyes were magically drawn to a model spaceship – you know, one of those silly things you only see in really bad Sci-Fi movies made back in the 50’s. (The picture above is actually very close to the model spaceship I built back then. It’s always been a huge disappointment to me that REAL spaceships couldn’t be as cool as this one.)

Suddenly, my whole world changed.

The results of this little episode wrought profound changes in my life. I became interested in space, science, and anything scientific. I discovered and began to read science fiction. I became technically oriented at an early age. I became a really, really good speller (as a result of reading so much sci-fi I developed a fantastic vocabulary at an early age). I studied technically-oriented subjects in school; I became an engineer; I learned to dream big dreams… oh, the list goes on and on.

The fact is, this single event actually changed my life – all because I became open to “another” possibility. Of course, I had to “unfocus” a bit – but thanks to a very wise grandmother, it happened.

I’ll let you draw your own lessons - surely you’ve had a similar experience? As for me, I just have one last thing to add:

Thanks, Grandma!

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