A wise person once said, “Expectation is the root of all heartache”. Whoever he was, this guy had the secret to life summed up in 7 words. What hurts us the most as human beings is when our anticipations are drowned, in other words when our expectations haven’t been met.

For example, a childhood wasted on broken promises. When a child believes that you will stick to your word, of taking him somewhere, or buying him something, etc., and you end up not meeting the expectations that child has built based upon their belief in your word, it results in a part of him breaking.  

 We all have expectations, big or small, and we end up building our dreams and planning our futures on their basis. The thing about expectations is that whether you build them yourself, or you build them based on the words or actions of the people surrounding you, you end up mentally conjuring a fast track for a Ferrari ride to the boulevard of a broken heart. 

We can tell from the people around us as well as from research being made that the rate of couples getting divorced just keeps on increasing with time. One of the reasons this happens is the birth of an unrealistic expectation. Being a woman in the UAE, we’ve all heard the famous line our parents repeat over and over as an answer to every question or initiative we have in life: “you can do that when you’re married” or “ask your husband when you’re married”. As a result this builds unrealistic expectations in most of our women and divorce happens when those expectations aren’t met. This also applies to men but in different contexts and for different reasons as well.

The only way around this is to just take a step back and relax. What is meant to happen will happen, don’t wait around expecting it to. Our expectations shouldn’t contradict reality. We can’t change reality but we can change the perfect image framed in our minds. The problem we have with that image is that when reality takes its course, it ends up not fitting into that framework we have, so we as a result, we end up dissing or throwing what’s real away for an image thats partially fiction. For example, both men and women nowadays have a specific image of the person that they want to spend the rest of their lives with in mind. That person has a certain personality, a certain look, a certain figure, basically a certain everything! No one in this world has that certain everything! They end up disregarding every person that might or might not be that “meant to be” person because of that. No one is going to perfectly fit your frame in reality, because it just simply doesn’t exist and if you think they do then theres something in them that you’re ignorant of but will end up realizing sooner or later. Some regard this as settling for less but in reality, you’re not settling for less; you’re settling for what’s real. 

Lao Tzu preaches to act without expectation. In my opinion, the only expectations we should keep in tact, are the expectations we have of giving. It doesn’t hurt to give. What we should change are the expectations we have of what we will receive in return. It doesn’t have to be a causal relationship, because in the belief of that relationship lies disappointment. 

Although we’d like to believe otherwise, reality is harsh and cruel sometimes and it’s this truth that causes us to hit to rock bottom most of the time. As soon as we embrace this as individuals, we develop the ability to differentiate between reality and fiction/fantasy. As much as we all live to live in that parallel unrealistic universe, a wake up call is in order. We can’t bring a change to the real world, if we aren’t really living there.