How has life surprised you?

Cricket ball polishing videos. XD

Constantly!

The development of the internet and it’s significant impact on human psychology. Technology as a whole, the direction of American culture… Life itself was/is a surprise to me

Watching a man walk on the moon, seeing photos from the surface of Mars, hearing Martin Luther King tell us he had a dream in person and experiencing he horror of the assassinations of him and the Kennedys, witnessing the end of polio in the U.S. and the teardown of the Berlin Wall, voting for our first Black president, seeing the advent of email and the Internet, ... and discovering Fluther… these are only some of the big, amazing and surprising events that have occurred in my lifetime.

Shit well I didn’t expect to get direly ill when I was 14. That was a surprise.

I didn’t expect I’d end up majoring in computer science. In high school as a lofty physicist-to-be I thought CS sounded boring. Turns out I like it a lot.

Definitely didn’t expect to turn out a social butterfly in college. Didn’t expect I would ever learn to love being busy. Never expected I would love and appreciate life so much and have so much fun.

I didn’t imagine traveling as much as I have. It’s been an amazing experience to learn how people live in different parts of the world and how much you can can find in common with people so different from you.

I didn’t expect life to kick me in the balls so many time, or to find I could rise above that crap.

I get delighted when people take the time to be kind to me, and ask how I am. That is what makes life meaningful. Because that takes effort and time on the writers behalf. In real life, the same. Small things matter.

I never expected to find myself shooting blanks.

This sounds really teeny-bopper-ish, I know, but it’s the biggest surprise I’ve had in life so far, and I have a feeling it’ll rank pretty high for a long time. The guy that I really liked – I mean, really liked – for quite a while turned out to be a jerk, and his younger siblings turned out to be my best friends in the entire world. That was a shock.

Also, that moment when I really acknowledged the large difference between myself and most other teens my age was a turning point, and a surprise. Ever since then, I’ve accepted myself for who I am, not who I want to be. That was a great surprise.

@wundayatta

I have been meaning to ask you this for months yet I’ve never had the opportunity but….
Is that a picture an Ass as your avatar?

@HolographicUniverse Assk and you shall receive. : )

Firstly, I never in a million years expected to live to this point. I was sure I’d be dead long before now! Just the fact that I’ve survived has to be the most surprising thing for me.

Secondly, how much I love being a mother. I had no idea how much love I was capable of feeling, how motherhood would give me such a sense of purpose, and would become such a large part of my identity.

Thirdly, finding love when I least expected and least wanted it. I was happily blindsided by that one.

Lastly (for the moment – I’m sure tomorrow will bring new things to be surprised by), I’m happily surprised by the things I do to earn a living: managing this site and copy-editing. Love both of my current careers.

By showing Murphy’s Law exists everywhere and anywhere!

@augustlan why didnt you expect to live long?

@HolographicUniverse If you click on my avatar, you will be taken to a page with a larger picture, and you can see it better. It is an ass with a map of the world photoshopped on it. For me, it represents the mixture of sides of my personality. I want to be a bad-ass, but unfortunately, I’ve always tried to be good. I want to get all the girls, but I also need to save the world.

Both of those goals are unrealistic, and both have caused me psychological problems which resulted in my being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Which is kind of what the avatar symbolizes for me now. However, my name is one day at a time. One day at a time is how you overcome bipolar disorder. You can’t plan for the future. You can only handle today. It’s too overwhelming to think about being able to deal with this for more than a day, but for a day, it is doable.

I found the avatar before I was diagnosed, but I think that it still works quite well. I always knew who I was even before I got diagnosed. I didn’t have a label for it, though. And the label doesn’t really explain much, either, but it makes it convenient sometimes, when trying to answer questions like yours.

The world is what I care about most. I care about all the people. Not just those in one nation. I see us as all being in this together. So the map represents that idea, but it is superimposed on the ass, which can be both sexually alluring but also the site of elimination and bad odors and whatnot. SO it’s everything good and bad wrapped up in one.

But yes. It’s an ass. Like me.

@HolographicUniverse Lots of reasons, really. A horrific, abusive childhood. Then, being sure my abuser would murder me after I stood up to him. Many childhood illnesses, a life-threatening illness as a teenager, and later chronic health issues as an adult (most notably, kidney disease.) I’m pretty happy to have been wrong about this thing. So far. :)