Expectations

Have you ever noticed that people disappoint you a lot? Do you regularly find yourself disapproving of others' conduct? Are you surprised when someone lives up to the standards you set?

You could have expectations.

If this is the case, you’re not alone. Most of us have expectations for other people, and it is not unusual for them to go unmet. In fact, some of us have so many expectations that our relationships are often a source of dissatisfaction, leaving us frustrated and unfulfilled. These expectations are not always easy to explain either. Some of them are the product of our upbringings and the expectations that we were held to as children. Some of them are the side effect of another condition, self centeredness, which gives rise to a type of entitlement-based expectations. And then there are expectations formed around others’ behavior—as in what you’ve come to expect. And to top it off, there are principled expectations, which are abstract in nature and represent how we think people should behave in general. Determining what kind of expectations you have—and where they come from—is an important part of learning more about your condition.

To truly understand your expectations—and to learn to live with them—you have to be honest about the effect they have on you. For instance—is it your husband’s incurable laziness and bad attitude about housework that disappoints you, or is it your unrealistic expectation that one’s spouse should want to help the other spouse equally shoulder the responsibilities of the home? Is the source of your disgust really the blatant superficiality of all your friends and how much they talk about money and new clothes and houses and other people, or is it your naive expectation that people should, on average, be concerned with matters of significance? Are you perturbed because the receptionist at your doctor’s office barely looked you in the eye and acted like you were annoying them the whole time you were there, as if you weren’t the customer and you weren’t paying good money to see your doctor and as if you didn’t make this appointment three months ago—or is it your overly demanding expectation that people should practice simple politeness and make eye contact and stop bringing their crappy attitudes into work with them and show a little professionalism? Are you angry because your nearly-adult kids complain constantly and take their privileged lives for granted and act like spoiled little brats who can’t tear themselves away from a text message for one second to actually communicate with you about their day, or is it because, like an idiot, you expect them to understand the advantages they have in life and show some appreciation and act their age instead of acting like tweens for once? Are you enraged by people in line at Starbucks who throw a hissy-fit when the barista doesn’t have their favorite ingredient, by drivers who honk at you after .005 seconds of sitting at a green light, at parents who smoke in the car with their babies in the backseat, at the nearly 2000 people who stampeded into a Walmart on Black Friday in 2008 killing a seasonal employee by crushing him to death and then complained when they were asked to leave the store, and by John Edwards?

Or are you enraged because, despite thousands of years of history and atrocities and small minds and weak characters and the utter predictability of human behavior, you still expect people to be better than they are?

It’s exactly this kind of introspective exercise that can help you determine the source of any negative feelings you might be experiencing as a result of your relationships and interactions with the world. And when you realize, finally, that it’s your expectations that are at the root of your negative feelings about people, you can take the first step towards recovery:

Abandon them.

“For your health.”

-Dr. Steve Brule

N

A guest, like all my Fathers.

King David, in what must have been a moment of angst about the tragic brevity of life, wrote in melancholy song:

“Oh Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!
Behold, you have made my days a
few handbreaths, and my lifetime is as
nothing before you. Surely all mankind
stands as a mere shadow! Surely for nothing
they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth,
and does not know who will gather!"

Psalm 30, v. 4.

No matter what creed you live by, or what beliefs you hold, there is something true about David’s words that transcends religion altogether. The insight of David’s reflection is not primarily the words themselves, but the reason behind them. He is asking, praying, that he will be made aware of his temporariness, his transiency. Is this necessary? Does not the very request itself beget his awareness of the fact? Doesn’t he already know? Or was he acknowledging that tendency people have of putting death out of their minds, or if not that, the habit of living in a way that takes for granted the frailty of life and misplaces significance in things that do not last? Did David know that before long he would forget this sacred appreciation towards time and begin again to entertain the illusions of the everyday? Surely a man like David understood the weaknesses of human character, and knew too well the attachments to this life that we form so deeply. We are not deterred from loving this life, no matter how incapable we will be in dealing with the loss that must necessarily follow. I think David knew this, and I think he believed that freeing ourselves from our attachment to this life was so inhuman, so against our nature, that to do so required a revelation.

I’m not sure if revelation is required or not, but it’s here, right in front of me. I open an ancient book, and I read the words of an ancient man, and in them I find a soul that pleads the way I feel. And what I feel, to be clear, is that the world has confused filler with substance, and false meaning is the byproduct. By sort of an ironic mistake, we have artificially distorted the value of things that fade away, and neglected that which truly lasts. Society uses this distortion to preserve itself by luring onlookers into pressure cooked lives where it sucks out their time and money and soul and distracts them to the point where they don't notice that their days are almost up until it's too late, and by then they've given their lives to it, ensuring it's immortality with their sacrifice. And while a few mourn the loss of one of their own, the masses hardly notice, and the cycle continues.

I don’t say this to aggrandize my sense of self awareness; I say it because it makes me profoundly sad to imagine a person who, coming to the end, realizes that they invested their lives in phony futures with no return. And if the author of the Psalms thought it could happen to him, I don't see why it couldn't happen to me. Or to you.

I don’t know if praying for an increased self-awareness of our own fleeting existence will make us any more likely to choose the carpenter’s cup over the golden goblet, but if all it does is remind us to look again at how we use our time here and how we live out our lives, then it wasn't in vain.



"Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.

Ignatius himself was dressed comfortably and sensibly. The hunting cap prevented head colds. The voluminous tweed trousers were durable and permitted unusually free locomotion. Their pleats and nooks contained pockets of warm, stale air that soothed Ignatius. The plaid flannel shirt made a jacket unnecessary while the muffler guarded exposed Reilly skin between earflap and collar. The outfit was acceptable by any theological and geometrical standards, however abstruse, and suggested a rich inner life."

-John Kennedy Toole, from A Confederacy of Dunces

-N