EXPECTATION: Is it better to leave your options open?
Peace begins when expectation ends.
Sri Chinmoy
Musing upon the good and the bad about ‘expectation’, I turned to my old friend the Shorter Oxford, always a useful source in times of perplexity. Cutting sharply to the chase, the OD suggests that, ‘expectation’ is a ‘Strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.’ And ‘a belief that someone should or will achieve something.’
Although, as an optimist I almost always expect the best and not the worst, nevertheless, I can sense danger here. Perhaps red flags should surround this word! Indeed, expectation can be rather like those mosquitoes that hum and whine around your ears just as you’re drifting off to sleep. You switch on the light – all set for murderous pursuit – and they miraculously vanish! Expectation is always there, buzzing around and concealing its sometimes disagreeable effects.
There are a whole slew of reasonable expectations which, if not fulfilled, can certainly complicate one’s life: The normally reliable boiler that breaks down on a Bank Holiday Friday just as the family arrive for the week-end, the new passport en route by special delivery but still hasn’t appeared as you’re ready to leave for the airport, the sweater label that declares itself ‘machine washable’ yet shrinks to midget proportions… these are not the stuff of tragedies yet they vex, irritate, cause inconvenience and generally reduce the sparkle in our eyes.
Gardening can be a constant source of expectation cut short, even if you’re aware that slugs and snails are drawn to courgettes and lettuce as closely as bankers to bonuses. You plant your plants or sow your seeds and yet despite every effort, and your fond hope that the warmth of summer will bring a cornucopia of delights, you have either nothing or a few pathetic green shreds.
Expectation unfulfilled casts its net far and wide. You work hard for an exam, good results are anticipated, indeed expected and you wind up not with an A or a B but with a C minus. Happy? Absolutely not. Even more corroding is it, if the expectations are not simply your own but stem from your nearest and dearest. One writer has described this as ‘swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations.’ On another level, is there anyone who’s never received thanks for a carefully chosen and relatively expensive gift? You know perfectly well that it’s better to give than to receive, you also know the joy of giving outweighs the need for gratitude…and yet the mosquito of expectation hovers around you. After all, it is reasonable to expect a thank you. Isn’t it?
But maybe the field that offers richest pickings might lie in relationships, be they parental, marital, sibling or just the very closest of friends. Here is a positive wealth of possibilities for things-not-working-out-as-you-expected. Could it be that many marriages or relationships fail because of hopes unfulfilled? Over time, I’ve probed around those occasions where I’ve felt either hurt, slighted, vexed or otherwise uncomfortable by my emotional reactions. If looked at with ruthless honesty, I’ve always detected that lurking somewhere, whirring around just out of sight, is that insidious mosquito. Something – or more truthfully someone – in some way, has not fulfilled my expectation. Often of them but just as often, if not more often, of myself. Either way, the result is less than comfortable.
When our expectations are not met it can haunt every aspect of our lives, responsible perhaps for almost every frisson of hurt, disappointment and misunderstanding. Apart from the pinpricks of disappointed expectations there are all too many examples of heart-rending tragedies where one’s perfectly reasonable expectations are dashed. Fatal accidents of every kind on land, sea or air – or sudden and totally unexpected death of a partner or a child. This is expectation unfulfilled at its most devastating and mind-numbing worst. There is no apparent safeguard against it. It is simply ‘Life’ or as Bishop Taylor allegedly said, ‘To preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him.’
Nowadays, to retain the peace of which Sri Chinmoy writes, it may be wise to consider what kind of expectations we’re holding. If as the OU suggests we have a ‘strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future’,maybe we need to examine whether that’s a helpful and positive expectation or whether it’s fear-driven and negative. Expectation about what others ‘should’ or ‘will’ achieve seems a shade close to the buzz of that troublesome mosquito. Maybe on this one, it’s better to keep our options open.