A while ago, I drove through McDonald’s and ordered a large, unsweetened iced tea. As I drove away, I took a sip and immediately made a face. “Ugh! This is SWEET tea!” Not what I wanted, and not what I expected. I don’t have anything against sweet tea, I’m just not fond of sweet tea. So, I didn’t drink it. I just went back, let them know they got the order wrong, and got a new cup of unsweetened iced tea.

Sometimes, we don’t get what we want, or what we expect. That part may be out of our control. Once that happens, though, we are in complete control of what we do next.

Suppose that I made some orange juice, but when I looked for a container to store it in, all I could find were milk containers. So, I put the orange juice in the milk container.

Wait a minute — how do I know it’s a milk container? Was it a gallon jug that has “MILK” written on it? Was it a 1/2 gallon carton that says “MILK?” Or is it just that I make an assumption based on what I usually experience?  If the container is transparent, I should be able to see what’s inside, and I’ll know what to expect. But if it’s opaque, what’s inside won’t be immediately obvious.

So, let’s say that the container is opaque, it’s what I usually put milk in, and I put orange juice in it.

Now Joe comes home. He loves orange juice. He also likes milk. And he’s thirsty. So, he opens the fridge, reaches in and grabs the container, opens the top, and takes a big swallow. He’s likely to make a face. Why? Well, he expected milk, but he got orange juice. He might momentarily look up at me at say, incredulously, “What the hell?  This is orange juice! It’s supposed to be milk!”

At this point, he’s got some choices.

He can throw the container against the wall, swearing at me for putting orange juice in a milk container.

He can create a special area in the fridge for “queer milk” so that he never has to make that mistake again.

He can take a breath, and change his expectations, given the new information that he has in his hands. Now that he is aware that the contents of the container, he can decide that he’d like some more orange juice, or he can put it back into the fridge and look for something else, like the milk he expected in the first place.

He can stand there, demanding that the contents of the container magically become milk, to match his expectations of the container.

What can we learn from this?

Violence is never the answer. Swearing at me and throwing the container against the wall would waste some perfectly good orange juice and probably start a fight. And we all know that we shouldn’t cry over spilled… well, orange juice. In all fairness, it wasn’t the orange juice’s fault.

Designating a special area in the fridge? A waste of space if we rarely encounter “queer milk.” We may want to put some white wine in that spot at some point. It makes much more sense to allow queer milk to mingle equally with everything else in the fridge. Besides, There are some things that Joe could do to avoid confusion and become more comfortable when he encounters unexpected orange juice filled milk containers in his life.

For example, – maybe Joe shouldn’t drink directly from the container. If Joe had taken a few seconds to look into the container, he would have seen that the contents were orange, and not white. Had he poured some of the contents into a glass, he would have immediately seen that he had orange juice, and not milk. He then could have decided to drink the orange juice, or pour it back and choose something else.

In this case, he already tasted the orange juice. Once he realized it was orange juice, maybe he realized it was really good orange juice. That can really help get over the discomfort caused by the unmet expectation. If it was bad orange juice, he could just put it away and pick something else. So, maybe we should all get to know what’s in our glass before we take a sip.

Labels can be deceiving. If the container had a permanent “MILK” label on it, it can still be used to hold orange juice. We should always double check before making an assumption.

Communication is important. When Joe went to the fridge to get a drink, I could have said, “hey, by the way, I put orange juice in the milk container. So, don’t expect milk.” That would have set his expectations and helped him make an informed choice.

Finally — and this one is really important — Getting upset about the fact that orange juice is in a container you expected milk to be in doesn’t mean that the orange juice will change to meet your expectations. It’s still going to be orange juice. Sure, you can go through the rest of your life calling orange juice in milk containers “milk,” but you’re really only fooling yourself. You can only control your next choice. And really, who cares which shelf I put it on in the fridge? It’s still got to get cold.