"It seems to me your problem lies with your expectations."
-Tomás Urrea, The Hummingbird's DaughterDespite my morose Pre-Valentine's Day post, I managed to have a Valentine's Day that greatly exceeded my expectations. Which one might think would be a good thing...but knowing my deeply dysfunctional nature, that of course did not end up being the case.
So instead of writing a post about how unexpectedly wonderful my Valentine's Day was, this post has the unfortunate responsibility of being about the dangers of expectations.
If you really sit down and think about it, expectations are a lot like mosquitoes; they serve no real purpose, and end up causing people pain and suffering. If I'd never had expectations about Valentine's Day, I never would have been let down when they weren't met. In fact, I might have never hated that day in the first place. And if I hadn't been so happy about the surpassing of my expectations this Valentine's Day, I wouldn't have created more expectations for the rest of the week. And if I hadn't continued to have better-than-I-expected experiences, I wouldn't have raised the bar of my expectations. And if I hadn't done that, well... I wouldn't have had my expectations so miserably disappointed.
The problem with expectations is that they crash and burn so much more spectacularly than hopes. Unlike hopes, you actually BELIEVE these things are going to turn out a certain way. That's a dangerous train of thought any day, but especially so when it regards the actions of others. If there's only one thing you take from this rant, let it be this: that you cannot know what someone else will do merely because you think it's what they should do. That's a very important lesson to learn, but it's probably one of those things that never really gets through our heads.
So as of this long weekend (jealously not as long as my VT friends' vacation), I'm recovering from Valentine's Week and figuring out ways to leave my pain-in-el-burro expectations behind. Currently, my plan is to just NOT let myself expect things of people. Feel like joining me?
It's worth a shot, anyways. And we could all use a little expectation-elimination.
P.S. (If you have any super-amazing/awesome/ANY ideas about how to work on overcoming expectations, email me at miss.morgan.blog@gmail.com. Also, if you've read some of the Q & A posts and you feel inspired to ask a question, please do. I sound much less pathetic when there's a purpose to my writing)
