Butter-Side Up

My toast fell but­ter side up today. I watched it slip off my plate and head towards the ground. Along the way it tum­bled off the counter, bounced on the floor, and landed butter-side up. Don’t they say toast always falls butter-side down? At least, that’s how the expres­sion usu­ally goes. It’s called Murphy’s Law, and it goes some­thing like this:

Any­thing that can go wrong will go wrong.

This usu­ally man­i­fests itself in many ways, but some of the most notice­able are:

1. You’re dri­ving in traf­fic, and the other lane is mov­ing faster. You switch lanes. Now your lane is going slower.
2. You choose the slow­est lineup at the gro­cery store.
3. Your toast falls butter-side down.
4. It rains on church pic­nic day.
5. Traf­fic is hor­ri­ble the morn­ing you’re 5 min­utes late.
6. You get a flat tire just after the car shop closes.
7. You drop your cell phone and it falls right between the crack of the ele­va­tor and the hall­way floor (I know some­one this hap­pened to).
8. Your email stops work­ing right when you need it most.
9. The light turns red just before you get there.

Now, in order for a law to truly be a law, it can­not be dis­proven. In order for it to be dis­proven, only one exam­ple where it isn’t true must exist. Today, that hap­pened for me. The toast fell butter-side up. Murphy’s Law obvi­ously isn’t true, but it points out some­thing inter­est­ing: we don’t notice all the good things in life. The thing I notice about Murphy’s Law is that it takes record of all the things that go wrong, and assumes that the uni­verse is out to get us. On the other hand, when things are going well (ie the toast stays on the plate, our car tire is pumped to per­fec­tion, our lane in traf­fic jumps ahead, etc.) we:

1. don’t real­ize it
2. assume it’s because we’re so amazing
3. smile about it and for­get it

What Murphy’s law points out is not that the uni­verse is out to get us, it points out that we’re often quite neg­a­tive. It’s like the audio/visual team at your church: when they do their job, no one notices. The minute there’s a squeal over the speak­ers, everyone’s head turns.

Let’s try to cel­e­brate the ‘glitch-free’ moments of life instead of moan­ing over the butter-side down moments.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen