Anticipation

The best things in life are those things you don't expect. When you build up something to the point of thinking it will be the second coming of Jesus, you are bound to be disappointed. It's those times that something nice happens unexpectedly that I have found to be the most rewarding.

For example, movies. I already wrote a little about this before, but the big-budget hyped-up supposed "box office smashes of the summer" almost inevitably fail to reach expectations. Movies like Pearl Harbor, Star Wars Episode I, Wild Wild West, etc., get so much attention before they even open, such that when people go see it, they expect that anything less than the "Greatest Movie Ever" will be a letdown. On the other hand, movies like the first Scream, Clerks, or Swingers don't receive nearly as much press, and they are that much more enjoyable to watch, when we don't expect it to be eight-thumbs up and flat out awesome. That's why I don't like to read critics' ratings, or pay that much attention to previews for that matter. And I rarely get that excited about an upcoming movie that hasn't come out yet, except for maybe Austin Powers movies or Star Wars movies.

When I was in junior high, life was basically eat, sleep, school, and Super Nintendo. Any time I had friends over, all we would do was play video games, and if we couldn't be playing video games, we would talk about them, like what the latest codes were. Either that, or we'd be reading our EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly). Nerds, I know. Anyways, there was a time when the hottest new game coming out was NBA Jam, originally only found in arcades but now being converted to SNES. Having burned endless tokens playing the game at Enchanted Castle over the course of a few months, I was thrilled that I would be able to get the game and play it at home as much as I wanted (provided that I did my daily sheets of math problems and my mom and dad approved). Plus, EGM said the home version was gonna be awesome, and back then I did not realize that all these magazines depend on advertisements from video game companies, so they would almost never diss a game by a big company like Midway.

I waited day and night for the release of NBA Jam for a few long weeks, like I had never waited for anything else in my entire life. I drew NBA Jam logos on my binder when I was at school. I taped up an ad for the game on my wall in my room and counted down the days (March 4th, 1994, isn't it disturbing that I still remember the exact date?). At Toys-R-Us, you could pre-order it, and of course I was one of the first in line. When the day finally came, I called the store to see if it was available and when the lady told me it was, I jumped on my bike and raced there. All I can remember is the feeling of pure excitement as I was riding to Toys-R-Us and picking up this little cartridge that was gonna be the best game ever made.

It turns out that while NBA Jam was good, it never really ended up being as incredible as I expected it to be. The graphics were never as good as the arcade, but the fact of the matter is that after counting down the days for a month or so (which is like an eternity when you are a kid), nothing short of perfection would have been worth all the anticipation. I was a disappointed because I had set myself up for disappointment.

When I was in high school, my mom was panicking because I was always one of the shortest kids in my class. She would make me drink milk all the time, and constantly correct my posture, basically do anything she thought would make me grow taller. Eventually, I did start growing, but I doubt it was because of what she made me do. The point of the story is that for years, my mom got me thinking that growing tall was the only thing that mattered. If I could just grow taller, all my problems would be solved. But now that I am almost 6 ft in height (which is not necessarily considered tall but it's decent for an Asian guy and a whole lot bigger than what I used to be) I find that it doesn't make me glad in any way. Maybe being 6 feet tall is actually a world better than being 5 feet tall, but I don't notice any sort of difference in the way it makes me feel.

I noticed similar things about my years in college. We would spend a great deal of time and money to plan a few big parties for someone's birthday, graduation, or whatever, and look forward to them for weeks in advance as motivation for studying. The parties turned out to be fun times, no doubt, but my favorite memories are of other things. What I enjoyed the most in those years and miss the most now is stuff like playing cards on the Quad, or the times I spent lifting with the same 3 boys in the mornings every day, or watching the Bears' amazing comebacks in each others' apartments and destroying all the blood vessels in my hand from giving people high-fives afterwards. I miss the pickup games of softball, random tackling of people at inappropriate situations, a couple memorable games of Starcraft (haha), and thowing tennis balls at each other's cars while driving down Neil on a Saturday afternoon. Organizing things is great, but it's the spontaneous things that are the most unforgettable, and the unexpected things that turn out to be the most fun.

In sports, it's the same. When the White Sox signed Albert Belle back in the day to bat behind Frank Thomas, I thought we were gonna be awesome. By now we all know that it was a disaster ("we" being baseball fans). But a couple years ago, the Sox came out of nowhere as a bunch of no-name scrubs and took the AL Central easily. As a fan, that year was probably one of the best I can remember, even though we got swept out of the playoffs in the first round and sucked the years after that. Illini Basketball came off an impressive run to the Elite Eight in 2001, and the next year we came back ranked #2 in the nation, eventually making it to the Sweet Sixteen. Undoubtedly, 2001 was sweeter, and much more so, even though we only made it one round further. This is because we weren't really expected to be that good, but the team treated fans to a pleasant surprise.

What I'm saying here is not that we should live with low expectations. But I do think that a lot of us pin our hopes of happiness on certain things we shouldn't necessarily count on. We, including myself, think that life would be so great if only we won the lottery, had a better car, lived in Florida or Hawaii, had a good girlfriend/boyfriend, or looked more attractive. If only this, if only that. Not just the big things, but the little things. When we go to a restaurant, the food has to be delicious, waiter has to be polite, and bill must be cheap for us to be satisfied. If a fork is a little dirty or your meal arrives late, it can flat-out ruin the night for some people, just like that.

For me, I once thought that to be happy, I needed to find an engineering job like everyone else out of school, move out, and live the young, urban, professional life. When things didn't work out that way in the past year or so, the easy thing to do would be to curse the economy and curse the system. To a large extent, I do wish that it was as easy to find a job now as it was three years ago, but if I let myself cry and feel sorry for myself in disappointment that things didn't live up to my expectations, then I would be missing out on so much.

Working at home with my dad was never the plan, especially since I never had much of a close relationship with him, and because I knew basically nothing about the business world. But not finding a job out of school has turned out to be an opportunity and a huge blessing in disguise. I've gotten the chance to learn how to manage money and invest for a living. I've finally been able to understand and fully appreciate how my dad worked hard and supported his family for over twenty years. And I've gotten to know and better love a father that I had lost touch with over the course of the past 10 years or so of my life. Not only this, but I get to stay around this area and continue to spend time with old friends, keep in touch with college people, and see my girl a whole lot more often than I ever got to before.

If I had chosen to wallow in the fact that I spent 4 years studying in school for a degree that has thus far been worthless in terms of finding a job, then I might very well have missed out on the beauty of the situation I find myself in now. Even though I still plan to find a full-time engineering job soon, or eventually pursue a graduate degree, I would not have given up this summer for anything.

So, we all have the choice of how to look at things we face. Not everyone is blessed with as much as others, but everybody should have at least something that they are glad for. In the process of complaining about a rude waiter, you might fail to notice that your food is exceptionally good. If you continually tell yourself that you can't wait to retire to sunny Florida, you might never appreciate the fact that you grew up in Chicago with the chance to have snowball fights and go sledding.

What I'm saying about expectations is this: while it's good to have high expectations, our lives shouldn't revolve around them. "Take it one day at a time" is probably one of the most annoying cliches, but it is a good way to live and I am still trying to fully understand what it means. I don't get super excited about many things and I don't get extremely depressed about things either. I think we'll all be a lot more happy if we just take it easy and take whatever comes in stride. Appreciate the big things as well as the little things.

Don't think I'm trying pretend to be some sage man who's got everything together all the time, cause I'm not. Probably everything I write has been written before anyways, and in far more eloquent form at that. But sometimes I get struck with some thoughts that I believe are too valuable to me not to write down and record somewhere. I write my blogs for myself as much as I do for other people who read it, if not more (that is probably why I write so much and so often). And I honestly hope that someone gets something out of the things I write, myself most of all. Oh, please do remember that I never intend to write something long and tedious, things just blow up on me. I'm also thinking that maybe I share a little too much about myself, such as the NBA Jam story, but by now everyone knows what a big nerd I am. So oh well, why bother trying to deny it?