ABSTRACT
Recently, at a Chinese restaurant, my fortune cookie revealed these words of wisdom: “The smart thing to do is to prepare for the unpredictable.” We might all agree that that’s smart. But exactly how do we go about preparing for the unpredictable? If something is totally unexpected, then it seems impossible to prepare for it because we don’t know what “it” is. “Be prepared” may be good advice, but be prepared for what? Shall we be prepared to abandon ship, escape fire, move to the country, shovel snow, take a surprise examination in chemistry, spend the million dollars we’ll win in a lottery, be run over by a truck, write our acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, or what? The possibilities—likely and unlikely—are too numerous to contemplate if we try to prepare for what is truly unpredictable. Such an effort could become an endless and fruitless search.
