How Expectations Are Born

Disappointment — a word that is synonymous with expectations.

In fact, it’s so synonymous, I’ll wager that one exists if and only if the other does.

As you can see from the iff symbol, I have a STEM bacground. Here’s little joke for my engineers and math people.

Disappointment is the emotion we feel when we make the mistake of believing that we can consciously experience exclusively what we want, and nothing else.

We’ve all read or heard quotes and bits of wisdom that sound a lot like:

• “I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations.”
  ― Bill Watterson, cartoonist of Calvin and Hobbes.
• “Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
  ― Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist.
• “There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations”
  ― Jodi Picoult, author of My Sister’s Keeper.

Each of these is accurate and encourages lowering our expectations. Yet, each person saying them is a comercially successful and renowned artist.

When reading these quotes, its natural to try to convince ourselves that these artists “must” have had some expectation for a fruitful outcome. Common sense may tell us this shouldn’t be possible. So, how is it possible for these people to be “expectationless” and still have acheived so much?

Simple: they didn’t confuse expectation and desire.

These artists — and I hypothesize every successful person has done so either consciously or subconsciously — were able to make the critical distinction between expectation and desire.

Put very plainly, expectations are born from seeking, desires are formed from accepting.

Expectations are the spoils of a narrowminded, although sometimes honorable, quest to obtain a very specific result. The act of seeking itself creates a tunnel in which our mind eliminates all other possibilities.

Here’s a very simple example: think about the last time you thought you left your phone on your nightstand, only to find that it was in your pocket after minutes of looking. What happened in this instance is far reaching — the outcome of “the phone will be on the nightstand” was expected even before the experience of “looking for the phone” began, so of course you had trouble finding it.

In contrast, broadening our mind and opening up to our desires, we can accept the experiences that come to us, one by one. Desire is an exercise in non-judgement, allowing us to determine the value of an experience after we’ve had it, rather than before.

For me, that’s all I really can acknowledge. I still find myself expecting certain outcomes, and it’s possible I might always. Regardless, I’ll continue to work on accepting new, unpredicted experiences.

I’m looking forward to what comes my way.