Expectations

Almost a decade ago I came across a quotation that said “Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups”. I can’t remember who said this, but it rung so true that I lived by it for a very long time. Eventually I have come to realize that while this quotation is absolutely true, there us a truer corollary: Assumption is the mother of all Expectations, which in turn is the mother of all Screw-ups.

Thus Assumptions and Expectations are inextricably linked. You start expecting when you make certain assumptions. You expect people to behave in a certain way when you assume that they belong to a selected category in your head. A child expects his mother to come and console him when he cries, since he assumes that it is his mother’s job, simply because she has done this in the past. I read once in a Sidney Sheldon novel, where one character tells the other that when you ASSUME, what you actually do is ASS-U-ME i.e. when you assume you make an ass out of you and me!

We make several assumptions on a minute by minute basis which give rise to expectations which in turn cause disappointment and unhappiness. Alexander Pope once said “Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed”, and I think this is unquestionably true.  It is true that all problems start when we expect from others, but then, can we truly live without expectations? Is it wrong if we expect something from our life partners? How do we define the people from whom we can have expectations that will be met and those from whom it makes no sense to have expectations? Or can we have expectations from members of our immediate family?

In that case, if a parent expects something from their child, or vice versa, is there a chance that they will face disappointment? Or if we expect something from our best friend is there a chance that they will not live up to our expectations? I think the answer on both counts is an unfortunate resounding YES! At the end of the day we are all human, and we cannot keep living up to the expectations of others, be it parents, partners, children or friends. Socially we are required to carry out some duties and responsibilities towards each other, but we may not always do so. If all of us decide to base our expectations on the social norms, we can never be happy; in fact we will end up as disappointed and angry people.

Maybe we should only have expectations from ourselves. That way we can do all the good we want to and are happy in ourselves. The problem arises, when we think that if I can do so much for this person, can I not expect this person to do just a few good things for me? The answer my friends, is NO. We need a paradigm change in how we think. When we do something good for someone else, do we get pleasure out of it? Most often we do. So basically we do something for someone else because it gives us a sense of accomplishment and happiness. Now, if we choose to remember this as the first and foremost principle, rarely will we face disappointment.

The next time you cook something very special for your partner, think of the joy you got out of seeing their happy face. Then remind yourself that what you did was for your own joy, the fact that your partner felt great about it is just a by-product of your action. The objective of doing this was to achieve joy, which you did, period. Then you will not expect your partner to turn up with flowers or gifts the next day and will thus save yourself the disappointment, if they don’t turn up with anything! Make it your own responsibility to keep yourself happy, and then do what it takes. Sounds selfish? Not really, because more often than not you will get happiness by doing things for your family and friends, this makes them happy and makes you happy too…wow, now isn’t that a Win-Win for all!

Very often, in soap operas and in real life, I’ve heard a mother telling her child “I took care of you in my womb for 9 months, changed your diapers, fed you, stayed up with you and took care of you when you were sick, bought you things and made you a good grown up individual just to see this day?”. This anger comes from her frustrated expectations. She forgets that she bore a child because she wanted to be a mother, she took care of child because she got joy out of the motherhood it was not something she did as a favor to this person. Don’t misunderstand, I am not saying the child should be ungrateful and should not care for the sacrifices made by the mother. But at the same time the mother too should not expect her child to be eternally grateful for all that she did, it is not humanly possible. We humans are selfish, in everything we do we expect some return or the other; the return could be a simple sense of fulfillment, nothing wrong with that. By bearing a child and bringing that child up the mother experiences a sense of being complete, which is great. But to expect anything more than that can give rise to disappointment. One school of thought will say that the child should be grateful to the mother eternally, it is only fair. But that reminds me of what Dennis Wholey, an old American television host, once said that “Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.”

The world is not fair, it can never be. It is crazy to expect it to be fair. Be assured, the quickest way to achieve unhappiness, anger and disappointment is to expect from others. Life cannot be based on expectations. To quote Charlotte Bronte “Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.” The only person you can have expectations from is yourself, because it is then up to you and only you to realize those expectations and to live by them. 

Stop expecting your in-laws (parents-in-law and children-in-law) to live by your fundas, stop expecting your parents or children to pull you of bad situations, stop expecting every friend of yours to be there for you, stop expecting the government to do something good for you, stop expecting people to be nice to you, basically STOP EXPECTING. Start DOING what you want to do, for yourselves and for others and always always always remember, that you are doing what you are doing, because you are getting joy out of doing it. Don’t do it if you are getting no happiness out of it. It’s not worth it. Have great expectations, but only from yourself, not from others. It is up to you to be happy and not up to others to make you happy, don’t expect anyone to do anything to make you happy, that way when someone does do something that gives you happiness, it will be a pleasant surprise and will double your joy. Simple isn’t it...well not really, but I think we owe it to ourselves to try and do this, for our own sake.

And finally to end with the words of Mark Twain, remember, Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get! J