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.
