Expectation"s"

Dec 07, 2009

This one’s for a close friend who told me I have started looking a lot at the broader global picture and forgotten to look around me. So I thought, why not, mauka bi hai aur dastur bhi..Whatever it means…

So, what’s around us?? People and lots of people. People in the form of friends, family, colleagues and of course strangers, lots of them who cross your path without even letting you know and some who take your attention.

Let’s start with ones whom we know; our friends, family and colleagues who make us laugh and cry innumerous times in a day, who contribute 99% of our life routine. But the other 1% cannot make us laugh or cry or cause any emotional outburst (only if he breaks the rear light of your car).

But the imp question is why only these people are able to create this emotion?? Do you ever feel bad if a stranger does not greet you on the traffic signal, but how about your friend not returning your call or your office colleague not asking you if you wanted a cup of coffee when he/she stood up to get one??

The answer to all of the above is a word which I believe ( and it may be wrong) is “expectation”. It is the one word in the English dictionary which is solely responsible for all the emotions floating around. Just think about it…one morning you wake up and do not know about this word….you will not yell at your mom for preparing the same breakfast, you will not yell at the one driving just ahead of you for breaking the signal, at your office colleague for not asking you coffee, your girlfriend for not talking long enough yesterday night or yourself for not remembering to buy yourself shaving foam which has been over for 3 days now…

A person breaks into an emotional outburst when he does not get what he expects. Now how do these expectations arise, is yet another topic on its own and we will touch upon it later. But yes, when our expectations are not fulfilled, we feel sad and when they are up to the mark or better we fill very happy.

But this is theoretical. If you ask me or yourself, is it possible to take away expectation from our lives, the answer would be a plain “no”. So then why this thought??

Because though it is not possible to entirely wash away the expectations, it is rather important to keep them in control, so as to not hurt yourself and those around you. And you will see that people around you who seem to be rather “cool” about stuff on which you overreact kind of follow this.

So how do these expectations build and what goes after them? An expectation is built over the time by the thing or person reacting or behaving in one particular way. For e.g. if one of your friends who’s always been a fun loving, happy go lucky, chatter box comes to your party and sits in one corner sipping a drink, what would you feel?? Not happy of course. So what made you expect he would behave in a particular way? His past behavior and traits. Similar is the case with everything and everybody surrounding you.

We over a period of time, get so used to certain things and expect them to behave in the same way all the time. Not only others, we expect ourselves also only to behave in a certain manner and when we don’t do that, we question ourselves also, and hear ourselves saying “what’s wrong with you dude, you never talk so much”.

So how do we not behave in one particular way and do we now have to try and behave different every time so as not get into a stereotypic behavior mode, if I may say??

Not really, the trick is not thinking too much before doing something and following your heart right through. If there’s a party going on, and you feel like singing out to everybody, don’t stop and think if it’s “correct” to do so at that particular time; just look for an opportunity and climb the stage and sing your heart out.

I think that by doing so we will achieve 2 things: one, not mould ourselves into one behavioral pattern and even if we do we will be called schizophrenic.

Just kidding, we need not be named into a category.

Take care!!