People say ‘assumption is the mother of all… problems’ (keeping in mind this is a social/family website, the word ‘problems’ is just a cover up) but I say otherwise. Now-a-days people are mostly straight forward and only if a real gossip-monger, will actually sit to assume and spread their thoughts. Not much of a gossiper myself, I keep my ears open! And as a woman grazing through thirty, I’ve a lot of experience, enough to realize why certain things happen in this world!
As a child you expect only love and intimacy from your parents and siblings. There’s nothing else that really matters in this world till then. And yet, it’s taken away from so many tiny tots, the thought itself depresses one. I have a three year old daughter and there is nothing I can do to calm the fears of those shown on the idiot box. Therefore, I’ve stopped watching ‘Crime Patrol’.
Though unaware of the word, a young girl expects her new found friends to be loyal, if nothing else. When her friendship takes a turn she did not expect, she gets her first heartache! I couldn’t figure why my then so-called-best-friend stopped communicating with me after a while. I suddenly found myself to be burdening her with my calls. I vowed never to get too close to anyone in the fear of letting my heart twinge again.
As a teenager, barely getting the attention I needed in my home, I ventured out to find it elsewhere. I was enjoying the new found feeling with the least expectations! But then when your high-school sweetheart isn’t what you had expected him to be, your heart breaks yet again even though you would’ve only expected him to trust you! My mother on the other hand expected me to be home on time, in vain. This only fueled a mother-daughter tiff during those years!
While entering adulthood, you find yourself busy meeting different expectations; your boss’s, your friends’, your to-be husband’s, your in-laws’, your computer teacher’s, society’s, etc. When something doesn’t go how someone expected it to, there are serious negative vibes involved because now you have out-grown the heart aches! I did not mention ‘family’s’ because by then my mother had given up expecting me to obey the rules and we started compromising and accepting each other the way we were.
Now, above thirty, you lessen your own expectations. You start to realize that only because you expect something to be or someone to behave in a certain way, is when your emotions can rule you! Why are they not performing the way I want them to, irrespective of the fact that I haven’t given them a clue of how I want them to perform! Why is he behaving like an obnoxious character from the 70’s? I would never behave that way! But have you been in his shoes completely to know how you would have behaved if in his situation? Are you not behaving with your wife, the way she wouldn’t have expected? What is the President, we elected, doing? We did not expect him to do things like this! Do you have the… guts (again used for cover, while the wise will casually understand) to be President and change the ways of the country overnight?
All of us expect, even when we do not know that we are expecting! Sit back, think and you will realize that your blood pressure is on the high only because things are not going the way you are expecting them to. If you expect your child to be obedient, calm yourself first and explain to them why. They were not born with an obeying bug. If you expect hubby dear to be all helpful when he gets home from work, but he is all worked up instead, sit and ask him why. You may be amazed at the amount of emotions he goes through because things did not go the way he had expected all day! If you expect your wife to be all romantic when you get home, think again! She hasn’t been sleeping all day either!
All said and done, I believe that one does not always have to mould themselves according to the expectations of others because nothing will go according to your expectations unless it’s supposed to, in the vicious circle called life! Having said that, a little self-tweaking at times lessens loads of problems!
