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.
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