For growth, welcome surprise
That was a bit more snow than we expected, right? For those of us who like all four seasons — which is the mindset I advise if you want to live happily in the Great Northeast — it was a fine surprise.
About a yard of snow piled up quickly starting Wednesday night, making it the biggest December storm hereabouts in a half-century. Kids got a snow day from school. People who plow driveways earned some much-needed cash. My dog, bounding through drifts, had one of the best days of his life.
It’s not that forecasters got it all wrong. Until just before it hit, though, the Capital Region was predicted to be only brushed by the snow, with areas around us getting more. Unexpectedly, we awoke to a winter scene out of storybooks.
Of course, we grumbled about digging out, as we always do. But my social media feeds were also filled with what can only be described as expressions of joy. At a time when the pandemicforced isolation makes days run together, we got a break: something both different and unanticipated.
It turns out that while not all surprises bring good news, we humans generally love a surprise. Scientists using MRI scans to watch our brains react to unexpected results have found that they trigger release of dopamine, the feel-good chemical neurotransmitter. Dopamine is a hormone that stimulates our brain’s reward center. Think about surprises in your life. My wife once threw me a birthday party without telling me who was going to show up, and I’ll never forget my delight at seeing the unexpected faces at our door. And when my dad was being honored several years after his retirement upon the completion of a project he had launched, I secretly flew across the country to be there. (My mom was playing the piano in a parlor as I arrived, so I slipped up behind her and started singing along, “Que será, será.” She wept with joy.)
Few of us seek out surprise, and some of us even claim to hate surprises. Our rational selves, uncomfortable with such abandon, crave the control that comes from knowing what’s coming. That’s why horoscope columns are still published in newspapers whose editors claim to be focused on facts. It’s why we love opinion polls, even knowing the limits of their accuracy. And it’s why weather forecasts are the most popular segment on local TV news programs.
But when it grabs us, surprise can be a powerful motivator. When Donald Trump first emerged as a presidential candidate five years ago, his outrageous rhetoric — unlike any serious candidate in history — drew a lot of attention. Although he never won the support of a majority of American voters, his appeal was strong in part simply because we couldn’t quite take our eyes off him. Maybe that’s because surprise also releases noradreneline, a hormone responsible for vigilant attention.
Or maybe it was because he stirred anger on all sides. Surprise stimulates our feelings according to Dr. Leeann Renninger, coauthor of a 2015 book on the psychology of surprise. She notes that our emotions are intensified by about 400 percent when we are surprised.
That underscores why there are two schools of thought about how Americans will respond once Trump leaves the center of media attention. Joe Biden campaigned on a promise of a return to normalcy, figuring that Americans are worn out after four years of bombast, upheaval and destruction of the norms that have long guided American politics. Biden’s path to victory wound through a landscape of voter exhaustion at Trump’s constant lies, administrative tumult and malicious unsettling of the global order.
But it’s also possible that Biden’s approach will prove boring after these years of never knowing what crazy act might next emerge from the Oval Office. We may have become addicted to the drug of Trumpism, and find that withdrawal now is as unsettling as its introduction was a half decade ago.
Addiction science teaches that the drugs most commonly abused by humans — alcohol, opiates, nicotine — also trigger a neurochemical reaction based on the release of dopamine, just as surprise does. Even those of us who are horrified by a president who displays little regard for the Constitution or the more challenging tasks of his job may find ourselves unsettled by a day without a new Trump outrage.
It reminds me of the story — perhaps apocryphal, though I’ve always hoped it was true — of what a friend said to my maternal grandfather, upon learning that he had eight children: “You need a new hobby.” Maybe as we turn away from what has become habitual, we can use our capacity for surprise as a pathway to joy in the year ahead.
We don’t know what may surprise and delight us in a book pulled off a shelf, a stranger first met, an activity never before experienced. Some people seem to be using the exile imposed by the pandemic for just such growth — trying out baking or home fitness routines, sampling new music, finding satisfaction in the unexpected ability to complete a home-repair project.
It’s no doubt harder to find joy in these days of quiet and isolation. But we may be able to surprise ourselves with new thoughts and behaviors, and wouldn’t that be a wonderful gift of this season?
Maybe we can use our capacity to be surprised as a pathway to joy.