The art of anticipation

In July I wrote about ’an­tic­i­pa­tion of some­thing which may have a sur­pris­ing re­sult, an open­ing that could lead to some­thing mag­nif­i­cent’.

And now, in Sep­tem­ber, an­other con­nected ran­dom thought has re­curred.

Dear reader, I’d like to go more deeply into the word ’an­tic­i­pa­tion’; it has al­ways fas­ci­nated me. This is gen­er­ally thought to mean ’look for­ward to’. But do we?

Of course, dif­fer­ent peo­ple may an­tic­i­pate Sep­tem­ber as the ini­ti­a­tion of cold weather: brac­ing winds, log fires or freez­ing con­di­tions. In­di­vid­u­ally, some may shiver and oth­ers de­light in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the cold weather to come. Equally, in Sep­tem­ber, we may bask in the sea­son of ’mists and fruit­ful­ness’, or, at least, the ’fruit­ful­ness’. Who doesn’t like ap­ples, raw, or, in their myr­iad forms of cook­ing? Or, it may be the sight of the glo­ri­ous golds and reds of the coloured Sep­tem­ber trees. Some chil­dren ’look for­ward’ to going back to school, oth­ers, poor things, don’t!

In Au­gust, last month’s an­tic­i­pa­tion of birth­days ran high in our fam­ily, birth­days on the 6, 7, 13 and 25 . Was the an­tic­i­pated re­sult what the per­son hoped for? The ra­tio­nal among us would say that it is bet­ter and safer not to an­tic­i­pate the re­sult, so as not to be dis­ap­pointed. Rather a gloomy way of look­ing at birth­days, or any­thing else, I think! Luck­ily for me, my birth­day on the 25 was just as won­der­ful as I an­tic­i­pated!

An­other ex­am­ple in my own case may il­lus­trate the ar­gu­ment I’m try­ing to make. I stud­ied twice with the Open Uni­ver­sity – six years for two de­grees – think­ing how splen­did it would be to put the let­ter BA Hons after my name. But was it? I’ve never used the let­ters, even with the ’Hons’ (Ho­n­ours) achieved. I dis­cov­ered that it was the study­ing that I en­joyed and not the re­sult. In other words, it’s the jour­ney that counts and not the des­ti­na­tion!