Battling with that thought is a penchant to hold out a slender hope that the surprise will be amazing. My mind starts to run away with possibilities, but my pragmatism always wins out, scratching each idea nearly immediately. This leaves me with a vague sense of hoping for the best, but planning to be underwhelmed. Maybe that's my personal mechanism of "under promise, over deliver".
There is a third point on the surprise continuum: the absolute surprise. The kind that isn't promoted or hinted at beforehand. It nixes the hang time that allows overanalysis, so the reactions will be truly genuine responses to the unexpected. Of course, when you're known to process before reacting and are capable of being non-emotive, you still face a potential need to diffuse the situation.
Surprises are stressful. They just happen to be a little less stressful when you don't preface them. Yet somehow I'm still in favor of being surprised. I do have a tendency to smell surprise in the air though, so I'm still waiting on an absolute surprise in my life.
Don't worry if you're confused. I just wrote all of that and I'm still unsure of my own verdict on surprises.
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