Unpredictablity

One of my favorite books is 'The Black Swan-The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Taleb, for two particular points he raises. One is if you can't imagine what you don't know, you will be shocked and unsettled when the unthinkably improbable event happens. And that past events are not very good indicators of future ones. The turkey story illustrates both these ideas.
Imagine a turkey. Farmer Jones feeds said turkey every day. Turkey comes to believe Farmer Jones is a great guy. Very reliable. Until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and Farmer Jones comes not with feed but an axe. Thwack!
Unpredictable? Well, not in retrospect. Of if viewed from Farmer Jones' perspective and not the turkey's.
But we tend to view events, our lives, the world (being Westerners) are linear. Progress is linear, moving in one direction, towards some goal. And therefore we are terribly unsettled when an event happens that is not on this linear path but is a 180 degree reversal. But life is made up of reversals, and hairpin turns, backtracks and sometimes spectacular leaps ahead.
We can make mistakes and become frustrated when we expect a simple linear pattern when the actual one is circular and complex. We may not even recognize a reversal if we're so set on a progression forward, and wonder why we bang our heads against the same wall over and over.
Sometimes seeing is believing, but more likely, it's our beliefs that color how we see.