Honesty in Expectation

Expectations.

We all have them. It’s pretty much impossible not to.

But I have discovered that we allow our expectations to get the better of us on too many occasions. I am beginning to understand that letting go of expectations is the best way to find happiness with what you have.

Other people expect a lot of us. And that is something that we absolutely can’t change. Let me say that again; we can’t change other people. I learned that lesson the hard way. But what we can change is how we respond to others. We can let their expectations take control of us or we can choose to live unique lives. When we become overly worried about how we appear on the outside, about our material or social appearance, we are in danger of falling into a trap of winning the approval of others. When we let other people’s expectations control us, we choose lifestyles that are pleasing to society, rather than listening to the longings of our own hearts.

“It’s so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don’t even know why you need it, you just think you do.” – An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green

Being enslaved to other people’s expectations has the ability to imprison us in a life that we didn’t choose.

And our expectations of others are just as, if not more, dangerous as the ones that people place on us.

Now let me clarify something before I move forward.

You deserve the best. You deserve to be treated like you matter. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to have people in your life that want the best for you and will listen to you when you’re at your lowest. You are allowed to expect kindness and love and friendship and generosity. These are not the expectations I am suggesting you push away. To do that would be self-destructive.

The kind of expectations I am talking about are the unrealistic expectations.

For example, I have a personal tendency to carefully plan out or write down (shocker) the things I am going to say before I actually say them. I throw different scenarios at myself, adapting to how I would react to different responses. Now perhaps this is somewhat extreme and is just the dramatic writer and performer that I am shining through into my personal life. But I know that I am not alone.

How many times have you planned out a conversation in your head and been extremely disappointed, even angry, when it doesn’t go the way you planned? How many times have you said something to someone expecting, or at least hoping, for a certain response? And how many times have you been disappointed when something you thought was going to go one way went completely in the opposite direction?

And we all do it. Every one of us. We tell someone that something doesn’t matter, expecting them to turn around and say “of course it does.” We tell someone that we are leaving them, expecting them to turn around and fight for us. We say or do something kind and expect to be recognized for it. And none of us want to admit these things, but they are true.

We build up expectations that don’t match our reality. We create people and things in our minds that are far more perfect than they actually are. The danger in this is obvious: no one is perfect, so no one can live up to our perfect expectations.

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.” – Paper Towns, John Green

And if we think about it logically, this way of living makes no sense. How can we possibly be upset when other people don’t live up to an idea that lives only in our minds?

And yet we do it. Constantly.

So I’m trying to change this for myself. I have a new goal: to be honest and live life without expectations of perfection. Because I have found them to be nothing but dangerous.

Holding on to unexpressed, impossible expectations is the easiest way to destroy happiness and relationships.

Because we are human. If we ourselves are incapable of loving other people perfectly, or responding to every situation perfectly, then we can’t expect that of others. We can’t test others, telling ourselves that they really care only if they respond exactly in the way that we expect them to. We can’t expect people to feel the way that we feel. We can’t expect them to understand everything going on in our lives, especially when we don’t tell them. We can’t expect people to read our minds.

And friends, I am going to be really real here. I am the biggest culprit of this. Far too often, I let my high expectations diminish the greatness of my reality. I read into every word of a phone call. I let the unanswered text message spiral me into a place of self-doubt. I start to think “if they really cared about me, they would have [insert my own personal, unexpressed expectation here].”

“Most people see the world as a threatening place, and because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.” – The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

The only way that I have come up with to fix this issue is honesty. We need to have the courage to discuss expectations, the ones placed on us by those around us and the ones we place on others. We have to be willing to lay our expectations on the line and we have to be willing to tell others that some expectations are too much for us.

And just think about what would happen if we were honest and learned not expect things. If we were able to limit our own impossible expectations, everything would become a blessing. Our days would be filled with moments of joy, instead of disappointments. Instead of being upset when something doesn’t go the way that we expected, we might be pleasantly surprised. Instead of being sad about what doesn’t happen, we would be happy about what does. Everything good that happens would be an unexpected gift. 

So I am going to try to learn to let go. I am going to make a conscious effort to be surprised by the good and the bad. I am going try to appreciate people for who they are and understand that the fact that they may not think and love like me is what makes this world unique and creative, albeit challenging. Because how boring would it be if we were all the same and just simply lived to live up to expectations?

“I was beginning to understand, though, that there were no absolutes, not in life or in people.” – Just Listen, Sarah Dessen

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Not Too Ashamed to Care, But Too Caring to Be Ashamed

“You have to learn to stand up for yourself.”

“You have to take initiative.”

“You’re just too nice.”

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a genuine longing to do things for other people. I love buying gifts for people. I like giving out compliments. I will pay for the drink of the person behind me at the coffee shop. I jump at the chance to  sit with my friends and give them advice.

But recently I discovered a trend in my life that made me question everything.

The other night, I found myself crying to a best friend on the phone at nearly 1 am. I was crying because I gave everything to someone that decided I wasn’t worth it. I trusted someone that used my heart against me.

And in the midst of that conversation, my friend said “you know, this is a theme in your life. Maybe you’re attracted to certain kinds of people because so many times you give everything to people who use you. ”

And she was right. I had noticed it before. Way too many times, especially in the last few years, someone I called a friend had leaned on me in order to make themselves feel better, only to then decide, one way or another, that I was too much too handle. That the love that I had to give was too much for them to take on.

And it left me feeling so stupid and broken. What was I doing loving these people? What was I doing being kind only so they could turn around and use me?

The solution I came up with? I decided not to care so much. I decided to make surface level connections and not put so much stake in my relationships. I pulled away from people I loved, out of the fear of scaring them away by caring too much.

This didn’t work. Not even close. I pulled away from people I cared about and kept my feelings to myself so that I wouldn’t get hurt. But as I did this, I just became more and more broken. I found that I was further and further away from my authentic self.

And then one day, when I was at my lowest, someone said five words to me: “you were made for more.” This changed my whole perspective and I had a realization.

I am not the problem.

I had spent such a long time trying to change myself, trying to be someone I was not, someone with a smaller heart, in order to fit the world’s image. But that’s not who I am, and so it was never going to work. I was never going to be happy being dishonest with my heart.

So if you are like me, and you feel things deeply and you love too hard, let me be the first to tell you:

You are not the problem.

The  problem is that the world we live in is one  where “nice” has become something of which you can be too much. Everyone tells us that we have to change ourselves, have to lose our compassion if we ever want to get where we want to go in life.

We are living in a world where I have become the one responsible for other people’s treatment of me. We are living in a world that teaches us that to be kind and vulnerable is to ask for abuse. We are living in a world in which I am the one pinned with feelings of shame and regret when someone takes advantage of me. We are living in a world in which caring has become something to be ashamed of.

It is the world that needs to change, not me.

I am imperfect, and there are certainly ways in which I can better myself, but, regardless of what the world tells me, hiding my feelings in order to keep from scaring those who cannot appreciate and respect me for them, is not the way to do that.

And so I have made a decision. I have decided that I would rather be the one who cares more than the one who doesn’t care at all. I would rather feel the pain of a broken heart than regret not loving.

I have decided to love bravely and care passionately, to “love like there’s no such thing as a broken heart.”

And I pray that, one day, selfless love will once again be an act of true character instead of the characterization of a desperate person trying to win affection. I pray that we will all strive to lift up the ones with the bravery to be compassionate, instead of using them up and tearing them down.

Some people might think this prayer is naive. Me? I just think it’s necessary.

“They were needy, afflicted, tormented…Of them, the world was not worthy.” -Hebrews 11:37-38