While visiting a friend I had not seen in a long time, I witnessed something that caught my attention. My friend’s daughter had spent the entire semester studying hard, determined to be at the top of her class. During finals week, she came home with a smile from ear to ear. Her shoulders were up, her gait was triumphant, and her face was glowing with pride and satisfaction.
She announced confidently that she had gotten a perfect score on her math exam–no small feat. We all congratulated her and told her how glad we were that all her hard work over the previous months had paid off. We expressed our pride in her achievement and how happy we were for her. She soaked it all in and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around as if she were floating on cloud nine.
Later that evening, her dad called to ask if I would accompany him to the movies. She heard the invitation and quickly asked if she could join us. It was a weeknight, and she had school the next day. But she had that look on her face that seemed to say, “Come on! Look at what I accomplished today. Let me top it off with a night at the movies.”
It was only a few hours before bedtime, but her mother acquiesced, and off we went to the theater.
Her dad had heard from a reputable source that the latest installment of the War of the Galaxies franchise was great and would be yet another blockbuster from that particular studio. We were all excited and couldn’t wait for the showing to start.
As the movie progressed, we began exchanging glances with one another. Something was off. On my part, I kept telling myself, “Okay. It will get better.” But that moment never came.
The story became increasingly difficult to follow. The characters seemed to be going through the motions, and scenes that appeared to be building toward something simply went nowhere. Eventually, the credits rolled and we walked out of the theater in relative silence. Nobody needed to say much. We had all reached the same conclusion.
The movie was bad. Not just “OK” bad. Really, really bad.
My friend, who only a few hours earlier had been practically floating through the house, was noticeably deflated. Then she said something that I initially accepted without giving it much thought.
“It kind of ruined the night.”
At the time, I understood exactly what she meant and shared her disappointment. But later, I started thinking about what she said.
The movie had nothing to do with her exam. It hadn’t changed her grade or erased the months she had spent studying. She had accomplished exactly what she had set out to accomplish. And yet, somehow, a movie that lasted a couple of hours had become part of the story of that achievement. That was the part that stayed with me.
What Were We Expecting?
Before we went to the theater, there wasn’t much missing from her day. She had worked toward a goal for months, taken the exam, received a perfect score, and spent the afternoon celebrating with people who were proud of her.
Then the invitation to the movies came. Perhaps the problem wasn’t simply that the movie was bad. Perhaps the movie had somehow become part of what the day was supposed to be.
She hadn’t needed to see it. Her original plan was to come home, brag about the achievement to the family, and get some sleep. But once the invitation came, the movie suddenly became part of the celebration. And somehow, that made how the movie turned out matter to a day that had already been a success.
Maybe that’s where expectations become interesting. An experience can begin carrying meaning before it actually happens.
A restaurant can be perfectly acceptable on an ordinary Tuesday. Put it at the end of a long-awaited anniversary, and “perfectly acceptable” can suddenly feel like a disappointment. The restaurant hasn’t changed. The expectations surrounding it have.
The movie we watched that night was bad. On an ordinary Tuesday, it probably would have been nothing more than a bad movie. But this wasn’t an ordinary Tuesday. It had become part of the celebration, and when the movie disappointed her, the disappointment somehow reached backward into a day that had already been a success.
The Weight of an Ending
There is something about endings that I find particularly interesting. They don’t always seem to stay where they belong.
A bad ending can reach backward and color what came before it. A good ending can sometimes do the opposite. Think about a vacation that is wonderful for ten days but ends with a miserable flight home. Years later, the flight may become the detail that dominates the story. The ten wonderful days haven’t disappeared. The flight simply occupies a particular place in the story we tell about the trip.
Maybe that’s because we have a tendency to turn experiences into stories, and stories tend to make us look for some kind of conclusion. Reality doesn’t necessarily arrange itself that neatly. One thing happens, then another, then another. Yet when we remember those things, they don’t always seem to carry the same weight they did when they happened.
Which brings me back to my friend: she got the perfect score, then she watched a terrible movie. Somehow, the movie became important enough to change how she experienced the entire day.
And I keep wondering what we were actually expecting that night to be. Was the perfect score enough on its own, or had the rest of the evening somehow become part of what made the day feel complete?
How often does what happens next quietly change the way we experience what happened before it?