The Pitfall of Expectations

Expectations are natural and normal to our lives.  I expect a great meal when I go to a BBQ house and when they deliver, I am gratified with the meal. You expect your car to start in the morning and according to its condition it probably delivers.  Expectations whether they are of yourself, others or of institutions or organizations can fail to materialize.  Sometimes your expectations will be fulfilled, but as you travel your journey you will also have expectations that do not occur as you anticipated.  When I got married I anticipated a lifetime partnership, but as my life unfolded I got a divorce.  I have had jobs that I expected to work out perfectly only to find out that I was mistaken.  So expectations can go either way.  There is a rock ballad that has a chorus, “Hold on loosely…”  This is good advice regarding expectations.  When you apply them to people you can be very disappointed.  Since you have little to no control over most people you are taking a gamble when you play the expectation game.  The odds may be in your favor or not.  But the point is that it in human relationships there are no guarantees.  Expectations whether they are of yourself, others or of institutions or organizations can

In the false self this can be very difficult.  When your ego self is disappointed it can choose to rage, depress, confront, attempt to force compliance to your expectations or adapt your behavior.  Since the false self is based out of your ego it does not know how to deal with not getting what it wants or expects.  It only knows how to want.  It never can accept or deal with reality.  In fact it creates its own reality.  I know you are acquainted with people who have little self-awareness and live their lives in their own unreal world  Their whole existence is lived inside the bubble that their ego and expectations create.  It is a delusional and not does not resemble reality.  They may get glimpses of reality now and then, but if it is unpleasant or does not fit their expectations they reject it.  When facing a breach in expectations the false self creates a mask that either pretends it is met, that it does not matter, or that

The true self can deal with reality.  It desires to live without self-deception and can deal with life when reality and expectations do not match.  Even unpleasant reality is better than pleasant deception.  The trues self does not need to deceive itself to survive.  Though you may not like what it see, you do not choose the option of creating a false face to cover their disappointment or to pretend and avoid facing reality.  If a person is in the true self and doesn’t meet the expectations of others it recognizes this and looking at the facts copes with it in a way that is in reality.  That may be ignoring the dissonance, talking it out, accepting it, and living in the present realizing that you will never live up to the expectations of others.  Randy Alcorn used to say at a meeting I attended monthly with he and other pro-life leaders,  “We live our lives before an audience of one.”  There is only opinion that matters in eternity.