Do you know the difference between expectation and hope?
When we were in Europe it got to be a running joke. Every time we asked if someone spoke English the answer was always some variation of, “A little bit.” Every time!
It made sense. Why set us up to be disappointed? Why not encourage us to talk slowly, to pause more? It couldn’t hurt the flow of communication.
Isn’t that great advice if you supposedly do speak the same language? What married couple hasn’t at least occasionally looked at each other in the middle of a sentence to wonder if they hail from the same planet? You’re so foreign to each other you may as well be foreigners.
When my brother got married, he and my sister-and-law invited everyone at the party to write them a note in a little scrapbook with the best marriage advice we’d ever heard. I still laugh out loud, sometimes, at the memory of my sister’s suggestion: “Keep your expectations low.”
And I thought, “What’s the downside?”
I’m not suggesting you don’t get your hopes up, but there’s a difference between expectation and hope.
Get your hopes up, know exactly what you want, and want it so badly it hurts. Just don’t decide in advance how you’ll get it.
People talk about their wildest dreams coming true -- but the key word in that phrase, I think, is wild. You’re not the only one writing your life story. Allow for the possibility someone you haven’t met or some path you can’t see will take that dream, strengthen it in ways you didn’t know it was weak, and blow you away with its magnificence.
Expecting plans to unfold -- or people to behave -- a certain way smacks of something…not good. Entitlement, maybe. Impending disappointment? Almost certainly.
I do it sometimes. Sometimes I get my heart set on not only the “what” but the “how.” I’ve gotten better at catching myself, though.
Then I think back to what was imprinted on stationery from another sister: “Stay loose, Mother Goose, and have a cool day.”