George Carlin: Messing With Us

Doesn't "expecting the unexpected" make the unexpected expected? ~ George Carlin

Well, gee George, I don't know. Does this mean there's no such thing as the unexpected -- unless something really is unexpected, but only because we didn't expect it and if we had, we wouldn't be worrying about this in the first place? And since we didn't, it's nobody's fault but our own because we were warned -- to expect it, that is? Whew. Gandalf might have said it best, "Expect me when you see me." But, does this mean the rest of the time we shouldn't expect him?

Let's think about this for a minute. If the unexpected is like a surprise or something we hadn't looked for, does this mean we should look for things we shouldn't look for? That kind of sounds like we might get in trouble, you know, looking for things we shouldn't be looking for. What if we find them, what then? Maybe we shouldn't look for certain things, but if we don't, we're not expecting the unexpected. Oh, my, this does get confusing.

And what about those surprises? I like Christmas and being surprised. Does this mean I should anticipate being surprised? I do that anyway, it's what happens on Christmas morning (at least in America, unless we open packages on Christmas Eve -- another topic for discussion). But this is a good question: if I anticipate it, is it a surprise anymore? Maybe what's in the box is (and it may be one heck of a surprise, if you know what I mean), so it could be that this is a smaller, more localized type of surprise rather than a huge, global one, huh? Kind of a like a pain in the neck instead of a pain in the, um, well, that doesn't exactly work, but you get the idea.

Okay, let's try to put this all together. We should expect the unexpected, anticipate the unanticipated, look for the things we don't look for (how do we do that, I'd like to know), and be un-surprised by surprises. Now, it could be that we're really supposed to prepare for the unexpected, but that means we know what's coming so we can be ready for it. And I don't always know what's coming so I can't always be prepared or at least sufficiently prepared so I can act like I knew what was coming all along, even though I didn't or couldn't have or wouldn't have if I could have.

You know what I think? I think this is all a bunch of nonsense and George (Carlin) is just messing with us. That's what I think.


(Photograph by Bonnie from Kendall Park, NJ, USA via Wikipedia)