Don't have any expectations
Life will be easier that way!
I have recently been thinking about expectations.
Or rather: should I have any of them? Or is it better to strip them away completely?
To be honest, I am torn, I don’t have a clear answer.
I sometimes think that yes, we need expectations! Expectations like respect, kindness, care, compassion, etc.
I will enter any interaction I encounter by respecting the other person, from the get-go. Being kind & open, honest & compassionate counts into that.
Yes, I will set my boundaries as well, I will not say yes to everything and I will disagree if something is not okay for me.
To me, these are basic traits in a human-to-human interaction, both professional and personal.
However, there is a big BUT:
I also know that I can deliver respect to another person, because I respect myself.
I can communicate openly cos I communicate openly with myself too. Yes, I totally talk to myself, who doesn’t do that ;)?!
I am honest to myself (to the degree I can at any given time point), so I am honest to others as well.
I did manage to develop compassion to myself, so I can be even more compassionate to others.
All while staying in touch with myself and not over giving, or giving myself up for others.
So the only conclusion I can draw is:
that we can only give to others what we can give to ourselves. How we treat others is a reflection of how we treat ourselves.
And here is where my dilemma comes in: if someone else can’t respect themselves, how can I have an expectation towards them to respect me or our interaction?
I can’t. Because they can’t.
Now to be more specific: let’s say I am in a working interaction & with time I realize the other person in not reliable, they disregard their own body & overwork, they don’t stick to what they say, tweaks & white-lies appear and I notice addictive behaviors. Things get postponed, constant overestimating of tasks is happening & delays occur regularly.
I do not feel that I can demand or expect any of my normal work-expectations, because clearly the other party can’t deliver self-respect, awareness, honesty, truth & reliability towards themselves.
So what does this mean for me?
In the past I would have over-compensated, I would have started to control the outcome more, I would have been bothered, annoyed and my energy would get drained.
Now? Not anymore. I let it be.
I do the best I can, I stay reliable, trusting, open & honest & keep on observing. At some point I will draw a conclusion, but for the time being, I can sit it out.
All this makes me question whether having expectations is even a thing? Should it exist?
It seems to be so normal: we expect our parents to take care of us as children, we expect politicians to have the best interest in mind for the country & people they work for, we expect a doctor to help us heal… well, maybe that one not so much anymore ;) :D… we expect a farmer to produce food for us etc etc.
And in an ideal, honest, truthful, moral & ethical society all this would be true, the reality often looks very different, where basic expectations are not fulfilled.
But does it mean, we shouldn’t have any expectations?
It almost feels like it & I feel at ease not having certain expectations in certain interactions… but I also feel, if we don’t encourage decent behaviors that we want to hone as a species, like respect, kindness & care, humanity will decline.
So maybe its about helping people to gain self-respect, care, kindness, compassion & truth?
Cos imagine: if ALL humans on earth would deeply respect themselves, they would respect others too.
If we all would be kind to ourselves, we would be kind to others too!
If we all wouldn’t want to harm ourselves, we wouldn’t want to harm or kill others!
Weeelll… I think for today that’s it. I do not think I have a clear YES-NO answer and I totally would love to hear your thoughts on this topic!
What do you think? Should we have expectations or not?
Love,
Daria