If you've spent enough time adulting, then you've probably had to move house at least once or twice.
Nothing can prepare you for the unholy shock of packing up a house you've spent a few years filling with more useless crap than you ever thought possible. I was actually reduced nearly to tears one fateful evening, one that had started out with me optimistically planning to pack up the study room before having some dinner and heading to bed.
It was around 10:30pm that a rage filled me that I've never experienced before, and an extremely strong desire to just set fire to that room and walk away and start my life new, nearly won. I simply could not believe HOW MUCH STUFF we had managed to cram into the cupboards, on the shelves, in boxes. Things that we had started and never finished, things we thought we might need or were hoping to do yet did not.
It wasn't just the sheer volume of things and the slowly dawning realisation that this room was probably going to consume my entire weekend, it was the fact that all this stuff served no purpose other than to ruin my life.
I had foolishly already agreed a move out date, and so the pressure was on to not only pack everything but clean the house and get it prepared for an inspection. I wanted my deposit back and was determined to do it.
People say expect the unexpected, but I think there are two layers to that saying. Because as much as that experience was stressful and frustrating, it pales in comparison to a later moving house adventure I had several years later.
This was (or was supposed to be) a six month house sit over the summer. We'd just got back from traveling overseas for an extended period and needed some time to do house viewing etc and to get all our stuff out of storage.
The landlady had always wanted to do a caravan trip, and had just bought herself a new caravan to tour the country with. It appeared we had a mutually beneficial arrangement that allowed us to get setup back in the country, and allowed her to take the trip of a lifetime while someone looked after her house.
When she set off, all was well. The weather was great, she was sending us updates of her adventures, and we were getting settled back into life. This was all going fine, until 5 weeks before we were due to move out, the landlady turned up on our doorstep demanding her house back! She had changed her mind, and without discussing it with us, had cut her trip short.
Obviously this wasn't going to be possible as we'd only just started doing viewings. Even if we applied to every house we saw, it would still take several weeks to sign contracts, pack the house etc. etc.
As you can probably already guess, she wasn't very receptive to me explaining these basic facts of life. She responded by accusing me of not making a serious attempt to actually move and intending to squat in her house indefinitely (I had to show her emails we were getting from agents confirming viewings etc to convince her otherwise).
She followed that up with threats to block my car in the driveway if we didn't vacate immediately. She then started fabricating excuses to access the property without our consent. On one occasion she pretended to hire a trades person to fix something in the house, only to show up to the appointment herself and barge her way in. She then proceeded to rummage through some of her drawers before pulling out an empty bag. She screamed at me that there had been money in this bag and that I had stolen her cash! You'd think that she'd be willing to eat some humble pie when she found the ACTUAL bag that had her cash in (that I'd never even touched the whole time we'd been there), but she just moved onto criticising something else before we started recording her and ushered her out of the house.
It was a bizarre experience to say the least. She also had some issues with her car that were present before she left, that she then tried to accuse us of causing damages. She refused to repair the washing machine in the house (which was still under warranty so would have cost her nothing), so we had to use a launderette for the last 3 weeks we were in the property. Not the most fun when you're trying to pack all your clothes and linen etc away.
All in all, it was indeed an equally unexpected series of events as before. Yet it felt completely different this time.
Both things came, ultimately, from a failure to predict. Unexpected events simply arise from the fact that I had expectations that turned out to be wrong.
But one hurts a lot more than the other. One was considerably more stressful.
I think when there is no one specific to blame. When it's a natural disaster, or a facet of existence like incorrectly estimating time, or just not having the budget to complete something, it's easier to process. I remember when my dad built the family home something unexpected happened. While digging the foundation we found a massive underground water tank that nobody had realised was there.
It turned out the only option was to back fill the entire thing with concrete, which blew a giant hole in the budget. When self-building your home you can get staggered mortgages, whereby you get a partial loan to complete some work, then as each stage is complete you can draw down the next part of the mortgage. My mum told me she ended up in the bank managers office (yes in those days you actually spoke to real people at banks!) literally begging him to release the next tranche of funds so we could actually finish the house. The absolute legend that he was, he bent the rules a little and helped us get over the line.
I think when you're the adverse affect of another human's decision making it hits different though. When the reason is not an immutable consequence of the laws of nature, when it's just whether someone else feels like doing it or not, it's much harder to take.
Because they could so easily change their mind, because it doesn't need to be that way, makes it all the harder. The suffering is the same, but it's an intentional choice that someone is making, rather than just hard luck.
So they say expect the unexpected. I'd say however, brace yourself much harder for the bad behaviour of your fellow humans.
I think you're much more likely to give up or be unsettled from the way other people treat you than the way the universe is constructed.
Being able to recover from those types of set backs can turn you into a really resilient individual.