Not long ago I was teetering dangerously close to extreme frustration in life and work. Though, for the most part, I enjoyed my job as a waitress I was fast becoming frustrated that nothing more concrete was coming my way or even seemed achievable. One day while working in the restaurant this always-looming pressure coupled with difficult customers was a bit too much to handle and made for an altogether, all too familiar, crap day at work. However, a very small gesture of kindness made the day instantly brighter and the overall outlook better. The chef instructed me to “get a spoon”. A simple instruction, yes, but what this meant was something so much more. Busy in the kitchen baking delicious desserts, the chef had emerged to invite me to taste his most recent treat. This is a rarity and is certainly something that demands you drop everything you are doing immediately to follow the instruction and get a spoon. What was in store was a bite of this brilliantly rich chocolate tart with a lightness that almost makes it feel entirely forgivable. A moment on the lips a lifetime on the hips this may be, but I’d have eaten my weight in that remedial dessert if I could.

It wasn’t just the chocolate that instantly brightened my day – though this did have significant bearing – but the easy gesture, that unbeknownst to the chef, turned my day around and put a positive spin on all that was seemingly so negative in my life. The most unexpected happening, was the most needed at that moment. It inspired my thinking of how it really is the small things in life that make the world of difference. ‘Big things come in small boxes’ isn’t just an echo of my whiney thirteen-year-old self anymore. And it wasn’t just this gesture, it was something that at that exact moment I desperately needed but had no clue that I did. Not specifically this bite of chocolate but the gesture that came out of leftfield. Something unexpected. Elated from the idea that something so easy could instantly make everything better I began a quest to prepare for more of these moments.

Stephanie Malcolm on how a spoon made her day...

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Nest of hair

So how exactly does one find the unexpected? How do we tap in to our subconscious and find what it is that we need exactly at certain moments of weakness to make things that little bit better? Of course this is no tangible thing that can be located and shelved for later making things slightly more difficult. This kind of thing isn’t limited to gestures that make people feel better. Many of the purest forms of subconscious thought can be translated into genius if we know how to catch it. Take Isaac Newton or the song All The Leaves Are Brown. Not quite on a similar level but close – arguably. Without the chanced upon apple falling into that nest of hair it may have taken many more years to arrive at The Universal Law of Gravitation. Or if John Phillips hadn’t acted upon that melody that suddenly presented itself to him, in the middle of a cold winter’s night, we’d never have had All the Leaves Are Brown from the Mamas and Papas. An even more frightening notion, the band might have missed their lucky break, thus rendering my teenage memories of talking nonsense around a friend’s kitchen table, accompanied by Mama Cass’s soulful harmonies, rather soulless in retrospect.

So where are these moments and how do we tap into the virtuosic parts of our subconscious? Do we await the stirring genius that lies dormant in all of us to someday enter our worlds with a timely bang? In one fell swoop it will turn our fortunes upside down; clear our debt; take an inch or two from our bellies? Wishful thinking. The unexpected doesn’t always arrive as a wave of happiness; often we’re caught off guard and the effects are disastrous. Take Ricky Gervais and mong-gate. Using Twitter to publicise your musings, no matter how profound, is meant to be a casual affair but Ricky got absolutely slammed in the press for something he claims
was a non-issue. Understandably, when in the public eye, perhaps don’t tweet something that could be blown out of proportion. With hundreds of thousands of followers though, it’s unlikely you’ll remain on everyone’s good side as a comic but this was a spectacular example of political correctness gone mad.

So how do we find it? The recession’s a shitter and most of us would do anything tobeoutofit.Dowerideitoutordowe wait for our ‘ready genius’ to emerge
and make everything better? I think it’s probably simpler: big things come in small boxes and all that, get yourself a spoon and make the best of it. Let your inner genius gush forth whenever it feels like it and ride the unexpected punches as they come – good or bad. Only then can we truly appreciate the unexpected.