Great Expectations
Last Thursday, I met a woman who proclaimed to read minds. Although she could not read minds, she did have a clever way of asking questions. For example, she might ask, "Have you been through a lot?" or "You don't get along well with your father, do you?" which, to the unassuming, could be convincing. After passing her mind-reading test, we spoke well into the morning hours, and I left eager to talk to her again.
On Friday, I went into the night preoccupied with meeting her again. Any other outcome would have been a disappointment. Throughout the night, old friends accused me of being "not present" and "distracted" because my eyes kept darting around, hoping to catch a glance of her. When she finally appeared, I was drained from all my anticipating and became unassertive. Friday's failure was in stark contrast to our unexpected first encounter.
As you can imagine, Thursday was an engaging experience, while Friday was not. It was because of expectations. Here are some other situations where I noticed expectations/desires prevent us from living a fulfilled life:
When we interview for a dream job or university, and begin fumbling our words. If we just talked the same way we talk to our friends, it would be much better. When we talk to our friends, we feel open and don't calculate their reception of us. Also, people use expectations as a form of escapism, especially in uncomfortable situations. For example, we may say, "Once things are back to normal, I'll be happy." or "Once I graduate, I'll stop stressing." This is a horrible habit because it is an agreement to be unhappy until the future.
So how can we prevent ourselves from self-sabotaging through expectations? The first step is to recognize how our expectations harm us. Because getting poor results but understanding our responsibility in them is drastically different from being unconscious of our culpability. When we witness the cause and effect, we tend to self-correct. In some cases, we may still fall victim to our expectations, but at least we will understand why.
Another helpful thing is to imagine your life without whatever you are after. This is generally easy because we usually don't have the thing we are expecting/desiring yet. After that, it is much easier to feel grateful for the opportunity at hand.
To recap:
Expectations are an agreement to be dissatisfied with the present
To make this worse, the future event that we desire is often out of our control (Border reopenings, other people's actions)
Even when the moment arrives, the expectations themselves eat away at the joy.
Lastly and most importantly, expectations blind us to the plethora of opportunities available in the now.
It is much better to take things as they come. As for the "mind reader," maybe I will see her again, maybe I won't. But, both will be just fine.
After Thoughts:
When I was writing this essay and having discussions with friends, two things came to mind:
One: When we purchase Bitcoin or another financial instrument, we do so because we expect it to increase in value. However, this expectation is different from an emotionally charged expectation.
Two: When we are learning a foreign language, we expect to gain from the experience. How could this form of expectation, which encourages us to work hard at something, be wrong?
Lastly, I recommend Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now. (Thank you to Avel Rivera for sharing it with me)
https://files.shroomery.org/cms/6584522-EckhartTolle-ThePowerOfNow.pdf
Thank you for reading.