Yesterday I suddenly got smacked in the face by my own expectations.
You see, normally I live life very much without them, but in certain areas they sometimes build up huge and ruin everything for me. So I got to thinking about
expectations in generalI can just give you an easy example from our everyday-life.
The Matrix films.
Do you remember the first one? The first one was cool, right? I really liked it. It was new, it was fresh at that time, it had something going.
There was something universal and true with many of the messages it wanted to send. Quotes like "Stop trying to hit me, and hit me" made me grin and nod agreeingly.
Later I went to see the second one.
I remember that when I was watching it, I had the feeling that I was waiting for something. Something that never came. I thought it was a very bad movie.
But was it so bad just because it was not made well?
I think, for me, only partly. The strongest reason I didn't like it, was because it didn't live up to the expectations I had built for it.
So......Maybe I could have enjoyed it more just for what it was if I didn't have those huge expectations?
I can also give an other example, and maybe a very common one.
The idea that the media and film industry pours out to us every day...That some day somebody is going to save us. That some day we will meet a person that "completes us". That some day we will find a somebody that will take away the pain that is living and make it into just happiness - "happily ever after"
Maybe it is not a conscious wish in all of us, but I am very sure that it lies in the bottom of the unconscious sea of so, so many people.
To me this says a lot. Expectations to life seem to narrow it in a way. It put frames to how we live, it makes our experiences smaller. It makes us not enjoy what is in the present, because of our thoughts of how it should be.
It makes us create life into a recipe It makes us not accept life as it really is, with all its pain and joy. It makes us wait and linger for something we don't have. And most important of all....It makes us forget the only thing we really have in life, the very moment right now!
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