Not What We Expect--A Paragraph a Day

Sometimes I'm kind of surprised at the way things turn out.  It's spring, so I can finally start doing long bike rides again.  The roads are dry and the air isn't too cold for it (this morning for my ride it was up to 35 degrees!).  What surprised me about the ride, though, is the same thing that surprised me last year about this time, and the year before that, and the year before that.  When I go out for my first long ride of the year, I expect by butt to hurt after two hours on the seat, and I expect my legs to hurt after two hours of steady pedaling.  But I find that the part of my body that suffers the most discomfort are my hands.  They're simply not used to being "stuck" for two hours on a handlebar, steering and absorbing every little shock that the bike experiences.  I think that life's like that sometimes--we know what difficulties we expect to face, but it's possible that some other difficulty may be more challenging.  Perhaps we simply need to expand our awareness a bit and recognize that something like a bike ride--or a career, or an education, or a relationship--is definitely going to give us some challenges, but they may not be in the areas that we expect challenges in.  Perhaps if we're ready for something different, if we're able to keep in mind that things may not turn out the way we expect them to, we may be ready to deal with such surprises effectively, and not let them overwhelm us.  And who knows?  One day we may even be able to prepare ourselves for such things and not even have to worry about them happening at all!