Expect Great Things?

"In the long run, we find what we expect. We shall be fortunate, then, if we expect great things.” 

    -Thoreau

"Expect gravel. Everything else is a happy surprise."

    -unknown.

    What's a man to expect in this dating scene we find ourselves in? How do we weigh what seems like good date of what's going on in the world against negativity bias? I have a friend here who insists that there are plenty of women in this part of the world, yet for three years I have been looking and having little luck. Many meet 3 of my 4 non-negociables, but over and over, all but one are checked off, and there's no about of manufacturing I can do to create an attraction to someone if it's not there. I dream (if only in day dreams) of potentially moving somewhere temporarily for a few months to find greener grass. Yet even my female cousins in cities as up and coming as Nashville or as heavily populated as New York are facing some very similar frustrations. 

    What should we as men in a modern world expect? It is true that our value structure determines the things we aim at. By reading this now, you've decided this is more worth your time than other things you could be doing on the internet. Your attention is based on what you value in this moment. But what if we value what we believe to be something extremely good, even in God's will, yet he seems to be silent. Options seem nebulous. And when we feel we have no options, we are led to sadness, which is rather an uncomfortable thing to admit. But it's often a much more accurate word than even loneliness or depression. 

    We are sad we it appears there are no options. Perhaps, then, a cure is an effort to increase our knowledge about that world past our comprehension, to both not make too many assumptions about what sorts of creatures are yet to be discovered under the lake's surface, while casting with a hope based on only partial vision. 

    Is that faith? Is this the reconciliation between the tension of the idioms? "Happiness is the difference between expectation and outcome." "We find not what we seek not." 

    Faith, I suppose, sits there between contemplation and action. It's part of the mix, the emulsifier, between a God who's described as all powerful and "sovereign" interacting with man of "free-will." Funny how in the culinary arts, the most common emulsifier is an egg. It's a kind of seed: something packed with potential, if only the creature would at last peck out of its shell, under its own strength, no matter how comfortable the inside is. 

    What does faith lead me to expect? The provision I need when I come to the end of knowing who I thought I was. I expect that my most important needs will be covered in due time...blended with the reality that I don't, and cannot have, a full knowing of what my deepest needs are.

    "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread."