Un-Great Expectations.
I’ve been thinking a lot about expectations this morning. As a self-diagnosed perfectionist, I have a lot of experience with not living up to my own, although my first year of teaching helped train me to cut myself some slack. But what’s been nagging at me lately lies in the realm of the expectations we have of others. I know the subject has gotten it’s teeth pretty well into me as my thoughts were enough to roust me from my warm bed at 7:00 this morning and propel me through baking a loaf of bread and then a batch of granola bars. Oh yeah. I bake when troubled. I have a sneaking suspicion that Dylan might occasionally push my buttons just to get a batch of cookies out of the deal, but I have no real proof.
Here’s the thing: what is fair to expect of someone? Or is it even right to have expectations of someone? So often we place these weighty requirements on the people around us that have nothing to do with who they are, but rather who we want them to be. Families are perfect examples of this. I think we all have these pre-conceived notions of what mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, and daughters are supposed to be like or what we want/need them to be. We hold the people we’re actually given up to these ideals and they’ll never be a perfect fit. Notice how I say that won’t be a perfect fit, and not that they won’t measure up? It bothers me that we instantly take a negative view of people when they don’t meet our expectations. So maybe your mom wasn’t a great cook (not true in my case, just an example) but she had the patience of a saint and was always willing to lend a helping hand. Maybe we should just learn to love people for who they are and appreciate what they are willing to offer of themselves. Which brings me to the other piece of my puzzle: why do we have to demand so much of one another? I am perpetually reminded of the “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” conundrum as of late. If you’re not familiar with the children’s book it’s about a mouse that gets a cookie and then wants milk. Once he gets milk, he wishes for something else, and then something more, and so on. I particularly like the “If You Give a Pig a Pancake” sequel, but as always, I digress. My point is that we are rarely satisfied with what we’re given. Someone helps us, and we wish they’d done more. Or gives us a gift and we find fault with it. Why? Isn’t it enough that they gave their time, ability, etc. in the first place? We are all busy, with our own lives to lead and our own interests to pursue. I don’t know. I realize it’s an answerless query in many ways. My stance comes from Taoism which teaches the practice of not having expectations and just taking every person, place, thing and moment for what it is. Now, I’m not saying I am successful in my practice in this, but I strive to be. It is not my intention here to insinuate that I am above all this and worthy of climbing up on a soapbox to preach to the rest of you. Truly, I think I am just trying to reason and write my way through my state of irk.
So what does this have to do with photography, you might be asking? Well, very little, but that’s the hazard of visiting a site maintained for personal reasons, now isn’t it? You are kind of at the mercy of my moods. Sorry about that. Although, in a way, my current state of mind does tie in nicely to the day’s images as they exceed my expectations. I shot out the window of the airplane as we began our descent into Colorado yesterday afternoon on a whim, really. I didn’t think I’d get much from it, or that I’d have to edit them quite a bit for them to be presentable. Because, really, you should have seen this window. Clear is not the first word that comes to mind. Not a trace of the scratchiness and smudginess that made me worry is noticeable on the final product though, and I didn’t have to do a bit of retouching in that respect. See what I mean about approaching things with no expectations? Ah well, thanks for indulging me and reading through to the end of the post. I’ll endeavor to keep things a little lighter in the future.
Beautiful post – thank you for that. I think gratitude plays a large role in fighting negative emotions associated with expectations. Trying not to expect is like saying “don’t think of an elephant,” which then, of course, becomes the only think you can think of. Meditating on gratitude for things you didn’t expect, I find, flips the experience of expectations upside-down so you can focus on the delight that accompanies them being exceeded rather than the disappointment of them not being met.
The example I thought of while reading your post was a my hunt for laundry detergent today. I was looking for a small-sized bottle, but most stores only sold fancy varieties in small bottles, for $8. On a whim, I stopped by a grocery store and found generic brand in small bottles on sale for $2. It was a ridiculously good deal that greatly exceeded my expectations. As mundane of a celebration as it was, I indulged in the gratitude I felt for stumbling upon that deal, and doing that really put me in a good mood. Gratitude can be a very powerful emotion.
Very nicely said. I think gratitude was the word I was looking for when I came to the second part of my query: appreciating what others are willing to do. We focus so much on what they aren’t, that we miss the fact that they just did a great deal for us, even if it they didn’t hit every last item on our checklist for them. I’ve gone well out of my way for a few people lately, only to find them irritated with me for not doing more, which is what got me thinking about all this. It’s not that I expected (there’s that word again) loads of gratitude from them for what I did, but I certainly wasn’t pleased to receive irritation for my efforts. Of course, this made me re-examine my own behavior. We’re never innocent of the things that annoy us. I like the idea of meditating on gratitude. I’m going to try that. Thanks for offering your thoughts.