Uncertainty and Expectations are continuos joys of life! We live every moment expecting something from the people surrounding us. It could be as small as a glass of water, as abstract as love and compassion or just as simple as courtesy and politeness. But certainly we do expect something, small or big, tangible or abstract from our spouses, kids, parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, grocery-story-guy and in fact from anyone and everyone we meet in our daily life.
Expectation varies from time to time, situation to situation and from person to person. I may expect my spouse to greet me with a warm cup of coffee and a loving hug when I am suffering from migraine whereas I may just expect a caring concern and a friendly advice to visit a doctor, from my neighbor across the street. Surprisingly, if I get the reverse, I get disappointed, maybe even angry at the fact that my neighbor is more caring than my spouse! How can my spouse not know that the only thing that I really need now is a tylonol, warm cup of coffee and some peace and quite time and not a doctor or advice to visit a doctor!
Our life shapes on how we manage our expectations. If we expect less from people, we are happy. But then how can we not expect – we are humans! If we allow the car in front of us to merge into our lane in a traffic jam, we expect a thank you wave, even though we don’t know the person driving the car. We humans have a built-in algorithm of mapping our actions to expectations. As soon as we do something for someone, the algorithm kicks in and adds an expectation star against the person. More you do something for someone, more you automatically start expecting from the person. What you expect may vary based on the person, personality and relationship but definitely an entry gets added in the expectation book!
Disappointment and anger comes from frustrated expectations. One of the key factors of success and happiness is to learn to expect the right things from the right people at the right time. If you don’t have any expectation from anyone, then indeed you are an evolved soul! As Stephen Hawking put it “When ones expectations are reduced to zero, then one really appreciates what one does have”. You start looking at life beyond actions and expectations and embrace what comes your way however unknown it is.
That said, I would say that it is impossible to live without expectations! You have to expect certain behavior from anyone and anything, may it be a dog, a cat or a human. Yes, you can have a reasonable expectation from a fellow human being. The question is how does it effect you when your expectations are not met? Does it make you sad? How much? In what way? If you can manage your expectations so that it does not disappoint you, make you sad, give you misery then definitely you have found a way to lead a happy life! Always remember that the best things in life are unexpected – because there were no expectations!
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