Lesson #7: Things Don't Always Turn out the Way You Plan

As someone who likes to overthink and over-analyze many of life's situations, this is a lesson that I still sometimes have trouble with. It's hard when you put a lot of thought or effort into something and it still doesn't go the way you wanted, but (and I KNOW this is a cliché) that's life. We don't always get a say in how things turn out, but we do get do choose how we handle these outcomes. There have been many times in my life that things haven't turned out exactly the way I wanted or expected them to, but whether that was good or bad depended on how I decided to view the situation. I think that Friends does a really great job of illustrating this concept, because things rarely seem to work out exactly the way you think it will for this bunch, but they really manage to make the best of it.

So with Thanksgiving coming up in the next few weeks, what better example is there than the episode where Monica's first Thanksgiving dinner was ruined by a giant inflatable Underdog balloon?

Okay so maybe it wasn't exactly Underdog's fault, but when Monica agrees to cook Thanksgiving dinner for everyone, she is interrupted when Chandler bursts in the apartment to tell everyone that the Underdog balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has gotten lose and this might be everyone's only chance to see "an 80-ft inflatable dog loose over the city." The group runs out the door to get to the roof, and Rachel and Monica forget to grab the keys to the apartment, thinking the other one has grabbed them. They get back and realize that neither has the key, and while Chandler and Joey have a spare, it takes a while for them to locate it. By the time they manage to get back into the apartment, the turkey is burnt and the Thanksgiving dinner that Monica has worked so hard to make is ruined.

Obviously, Monica is pretty upset that an entire day's worth of slaving away in the kitchen has quite literally gone up in smoke. It also doesn't make it better that following Rachel's complaints that she missed her flight to see her family, Joey exclaims that they "all had better plans, okay? This was nobody's first choice!" And although he's right (Monica and Ross were going to spend the holiday with their parents, Joey was going to go home to see his family, and Rachel was going to go skiing with her family in Vail), Monica takes offense to this comment. The group breaks out into an argument and the scene jumps to several hours later where the group is somberly sitting around, no longer speaking. Seconds later, however, Phoebe makes an observation that changes the mood.

Even though this Thanksgiving dinner was not at all how anyone thought it would be, things still turned out pretty well because the important elements of the holidays—family and friends—were still there. Even Chandler, who generally hates Thanksgiving, was really glad that the day's disastrous events had transpired in order to bring them all together.

So, things might not always turn out the way you plan. I know that "no one told you life was gonna be this way [*clapclapclapclap*]" but sometimes you just have to roll with the changes and make the best of them.

Images/Videos Courtesy of:

• paperblog
• Caitlyn Walter