Looking forward to a vacation can be one of the most uplifting aspects of everyday life. You can imagine all the fun things you’ll do, all the new things you’ll see, and maybe you’ll connect with people in an unexpected way. You imagine perfect weather, a perfect balance of down time and activities, and maybe even perfect timing. So how do you react when it rains the whole time? Or you don’t get tickets to the attraction on the top of your must-see list? Expectation can be a double-edged sword when thing don’t turn out the way you imagined.

Expectation VS allowing

In my early twenties, my friends and I would frequently head out to the local bars for a night out and a lot of the times it looked as expected. We started at our favorite bodega, then hopped over to another favorite spot, then another… okay, I was living in a place where there were so. many. bars. A lot of the time, it felt like we were chasing a good time. We would hop from bar to bar looking for it, and somehow it was just out of reach.

But on occasion, something magical happened. Something unexpected would pop up and take us on a completely different path. As the night unfolded, we found that we magically lined up with the most fun. We met new and interesting people, tried out new places, danced like nobody was watching, and floated home on a cloud of bliss. We used to refer to those nights as being “fish in the sea” because we allowed the tide to guide us without expectation.