YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’LL GET

Several weeks ago there was a great Hagar the Horrible cartoon in the Sunday paper. Lucky Eddie is complaining to Hagar and says “Sea battles…dragons…zombie armies…magic castles…. Let’s face it. I’m in a rut.” Hagar replies: “Lucky Eddie, you need to get out of your comfort zone! You can’t be timid and weak! You’ve got to take daring dangerous chances to feel alive! You’ve got to walk through fire! Do you understand what I’m telling you?” “Yes,” Luck Eddie replies. “I’m going to ask out a redhead!”

I know what Lucky Eddie meant. I asked out a redhead. She said “yes”. And I married

her and life has never been the same since. Even if, like Lucky Eddie, you have an idea of

what you might  be in for, you never know what you’ll get until the time comes to

actually learn what you have. Then you have to learn how to deal with what is and not

what you thought it might be.

That is what life is all about, isn’t it? It is learning how to live with whatever cards we

have been dealt at the time they have been dealt. We can always speculate ahead of time

about how we will respond to a certain situation. But we never know for certain what we

will actually do when that situation arises. Life is full of too many contingencies for

which we cannot account ahead of time.

That is also what makes life so interesting, so exciting and even so frustrating. We just

never know what the day or the hour or even the minute will bring because so much of

our life is out of our control. We can ask a redhead for a date and think we know what we

might be in for and we might discover we hit the nail on the head. On the other hand, the

redhead might not be the “typical” redhead, if there is such a person. And there probably

is not. Well, maybe.

Every situation in life is different. Even so, we have to prepare ahead of time for what

might be even if what might be never happens. That is not simply the Boy Scout motto, it

is also the only way to live. Otherwise we will be setting ourselves up for disaster. If we

have no inkling about what to expect in a given circumstance, we would be foolish to put

ourselves in what truly might be harm’s way.

Yet, even when we are most prepared, we still never really know what will happen. All

we can do is do our part. That is, first to try to be as best prepared as we can be and then

once the situation arises, do the very best we can to respond. That is all we can do and all

that we can expect and even demand of ourselves.

Not all redheads are alike. No two people are alike. No two situations are ever alike. That

is why, again, we never know what we will get, what will happen. But that is also what

makes life so interesting, isn’t it?