Law of Diminishing Expectations

"tripping hard falling down onto the ground
cause I can't stand up and I can't fall down
and I'm somewhere in the middle of this..."

- Somewhere in the Middle
by Dishwalla - 


Expectations.

People have been bombarded by this word every single day with or without their knowledge. We have always been put up to fulfill something, to achieve, or to be useful in one way or another.

I never liked expectations.

I was the eldest in the family, and being that just made expectations much, much higher. There are tons of shoulds, don'ts, do this, do that and what nots.

Mom would always say I started walking earlier than children my age. I talked even before my first tooth came out. She knew I was destined to do something great. Now, I don't think I am exactly meeting her expectations although she isn't complaining about how I run my life. It seems that my early progress on things led her to believe that I will be fulfilling all her lifelong dreams, but I really wasn't, coz I have my own thing going on, pretty messy and maybe a bit harder to fulfill but it's mine.

I started school when I was 2 years old but the formal one when I was 3, graduated college at 19, still not quite impressive but I was always top of my class and she continues to hold on to those elusive dreams.

Until I got pregnant.

I saw her face, the way she looked at me the night she went to the hospital to pick me up because I was taken there when I fainted because of overfatigue (I was working 2 jobs at the time). She knew it, saw right through me, devastated.

All positive expectations down the drain, in comes the negativities, all the more I had to prove myself and get things together.

After I gave birth to my son, I realized one thing. I would NEVER set expectations for him to fulfill. I would let him learn at his own pace and decide on things he would want to do. I understood my Mom very well, she was trying to hold on to something, wanting someone to save her and make life better not for herself but for me as well, I just never saw it that way. I always rebelled against her wishes, I never said I would follow them now but I learned to make adjustments and consider, be a WHOLE lot nicer to her at least.

We are not really aware sometimes but the most common receiver of our great (and not to mention dangerous) expectations are those people we love. It can be as simple as we expect them to remember our birthdays, anniversary, monthsary, the day we first met and so on... or the supreme expectation, that they love as the way we love them (sometimes just way too freakishly unreal). But we never learn, we don't stop, we don't take it easy coz we need to feel important, the need that our love is being reciprocated in an equal term (tsk tsk).

I am not claiming that I am able to separate myself and totally cease to expect from someone, maybe I am still a kid who gets frustrated everytime she was misunderstood, or felt taken forgranted, after all didn't we all yearn for affection, for somehow, someone would be able to glance our way and appreciate us and more importantly love us.

It sounded easy, but it never was. EVER.

We all have different ideas of how love can be expressed and like expectations, we also never settle for anything less than what we have in mind, we never learned to compromise (which was totally doofus!).

I’ve always tried to live out people’s expectations of me. Sometimes, I just want to SCREW UP and FAIL but I still choose not to. Failure is not what breaks me, but the successes I have achieved. Somehow, I felt I am never enough, and I always had to do more. It’s so frustrating.

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