Expectations

I am reading a book at the moment, it’s not a very good one mind but it got me to thinking.

In the book this guy lost his daughter and subsequently his faith in god.  He is now holed up in a shack with ‘god’ who is presenting himself as three characters, a black woman, Jesus and an Asian woman.  I’m not even attempting to get into that just now......

In the book, god suggests that we shouldn’t have expectations as we cannot see the future.  If we don’t expect anything of someone, we can never be disappointed.

What a great way to look at things, I thought; not that my boyfriend is god, but he once said a similar thing.   You should take people for what they are, not what you think they should be or want them to be. 

That just makes so much sense to me.

If we don’t expect anything of someone, we are therefore never disappointed by them.

If you sit and think about this for a minute you will realise just how true it is. 

You will probably realise you are more than likely doing it yourself, all of the time.

If our friend isn’t in contact in a long time, we question if they are our friend because we expect better than that from someone who is a friend.  Friendship comes with rules and expectations. 

I expect my friends to contact me now and again in return for me doing the same, if they don’t I do begin to think that they don’t care.  

I expect my friends to be there for me in a crisis.

I expect my friends not to lie to me.

I expect my friends not to betray me. 

At some point I have had all of the above and I have done all of the above.  My expectations were not met and I have not met the expectations of others.

If we didn’t have these expectations couldn’t we look at people in a new light?  Could we just focus on the good bits?

It’s a wonderful concept and I truly would love to live my life that way, but surely we all have expectations of others right?

We expect certain things from our loved ones, our families, our friends and when these expectations are questioned or lacking we are immediately upset.  Even with strangers we have expectations. 

I began to think how much expectations exist in our lives and how much emphasis we put on it and on others.  I don’t see how we could be human if we didn’t expect things.  It sure is safer to expect nothing from everyone.   No one could ever let us down because there would never be any expectation that that person would do anything for you or not do anything to you.  You would just be happy with whatever happened.  

As a human, we expect our families to take care of us, not to hurt us, to shelter us and feed us and protect us; not all families do that.

Our loved ones to treat us with respect, love us unconditionally and be faithful. 

Our friends to be there for us when we need them, lend a shoulder to cry on, to laugh with, to share, we expect they will not hurt us, betray us; but they do. 

It is nothing to do with time, you can know someone your whole life and be let down by them.  If we have known them less time does it make it any easier that they fell over your expectations?

Would it be easier to deal with betrayal after just a few years or 30-40 years?

Everyone has these expectations, it is a natural human reaction to others.  I don’t know if I can control or limit these expectations. 

We expect a certain level of communication from people and if we don’t get it, it can be misconstrued as not caring. 

How can we live without expectations?  Maybe it is because we use it as a measuring instrument. If we set certain levels of expectations for people we can measure their commitment, love, we can compare them to others.     

In relationships we show emotions and affections and by doing that ourselves I think makes us feel we deserve that back.  We don’t always get what we give though, and there it is, disappointment of our expectations. 

I try to treat others the way I would want to be treated.  I try to be as kind and helpful and friendly as I can.  I am not always good at it, and I’ve made mistakes; in those mistakes I have expected nothing in return as I felt I didn’t deserve anything.  In my mistakes what I had expected was wrong; just because we hurt someone we love, does not always result in them hurting us back.  

With all relationships of all kind, don’t we need to set these expectations? Expectations can make us happy as well as sad; like if someone exceeds your expectations.  I suppose this is how we become friends with people or how we fall in love.  They become more than an expectation, things move on but then the expectations are raised.

If I didn’t expect someone to be loyal but then they were, doesn’t that create an expectation, which is then set for the next person and so on and so on.   

If something good happens to us, we want it to happen again, so any positive attributes we show as human beings sets us up for a fall because not all human beings are the same.    

Expecting nothing of someone isn’t really possible is it?  Aren’t we selfish creatures, don’t we all want something, whether it is love, loyalty, affection, care or attention?  

We have all been there in some way or another; probably lots of times, I know I have.  I think getting close to any human being comes with the consequences of expectation.

Sometimes I see things either black or white, and with expectations I feel you are always risking disappointment.  Not everyone will let you down but be damn sure it will happen to us all.    

We could also blame our past experiences.  Here is where the precedent is set. I fall into that trap frequently.   Once we get shit on enough times we are expecting it again and again.  

I expect at some point I will be let down again by someone in life or by life itself.

As always, I will pick myself up and get on with life; and if nothing else, at least I’ll be expecting it.