I was up until 2 AM last night. I had butterflies bumping heads in my stomach and a cotton mouth that soaked up every last drop of water I slurped down.
I had just received my email from the folks at WorldTeach telling me exactly what school I would be volunteering in during my year-long stay in the Marshall Islands.
Suddenly it was real.
My six-month application had come to bear fruit and I was going to pack my bags with light and loose-fitting cloths and travel half-way around the world to a poor island nation to help underprivileged youth learn English. I was going to be in the front of 30 plus kids every day teaching them a language I am not completely sure I have mastered yet.
I felt like I had received a kick to the stomach and a blow to the head and was left just sitting there stunned with the world spinning around me.
I was excited, anxious and terrified.
What if the kids hate me?
What if they won’t listen to me?
What if I get kicked off the island because I couldn’t get my job done?
For a long time I have been living by the philosophy where I expect the worst and hope for the best and it has served me well. It sheds situations of their grand and bloated expectations and streamlines things into a form of reality that can be surprisingly hard to attain when everyone is focusing on feeling spectacular and you are looked at with concerned eyes when you respond “OK” to the how-are-you question instead of “GREAT.”
The problem with expecting the worst and hoping for the best is that it can result in an attitude where you don’t put everything you have into a certain thing because you expect it to not work out. It would be great if it did, but it probably won’t.
As I laid there in my bed I realized that the main reason I couldn’t sleep was that I was too busy expecting the worst instead of hoping for the best.
My stomach of rebelling against my body and my mouth was having a contest with the Sahara for the most arid place on earth because I expected to fail.
I think that it is OK to have realistic views of what is possible — just as long as it doesn’t cloud out too many other things as impossible.
HOPING FOR THE BEST and expecting the worst is probably the best way to go.
At least I know you sleep better.
I had just received my email from the folks at WorldTeach telling me exactly what school I would be volunteering in during my year-long stay in the Marshall Islands.
Suddenly it was real.
My six-month application had come to bear fruit and I was going to pack my bags with light and loose-fitting cloths and travel half-way around the world to a poor island nation to help underprivileged youth learn English. I was going to be in the front of 30 plus kids every day teaching them a language I am not completely sure I have mastered yet.
I felt like I had received a kick to the stomach and a blow to the head and was left just sitting there stunned with the world spinning around me.
I was excited, anxious and terrified.
What if the kids hate me?
What if they won’t listen to me?
What if I get kicked off the island because I couldn’t get my job done?
For a long time I have been living by the philosophy where I expect the worst and hope for the best and it has served me well. It sheds situations of their grand and bloated expectations and streamlines things into a form of reality that can be surprisingly hard to attain when everyone is focusing on feeling spectacular and you are looked at with concerned eyes when you respond “OK” to the how-are-you question instead of “GREAT.”
The problem with expecting the worst and hoping for the best is that it can result in an attitude where you don’t put everything you have into a certain thing because you expect it to not work out. It would be great if it did, but it probably won’t.
As I laid there in my bed I realized that the main reason I couldn’t sleep was that I was too busy expecting the worst instead of hoping for the best.
My stomach of rebelling against my body and my mouth was having a contest with the Sahara for the most arid place on earth because I expected to fail.
I think that it is OK to have realistic views of what is possible — just as long as it doesn’t cloud out too many other things as impossible.
HOPING FOR THE BEST and expecting the worst is probably the best way to go.
At least I know you sleep better.
The love you give comes back in the end.
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