Great Expectations

The title of what some have heralded as Dickens best work may be a bit misleading.

Does anyone think that Pip ever expected life to turn out the way it did? The thought gives one pause to think, “What do I expect of life?”

I was reflecting on what the word expectations means because, as I’m sure you, my readers have experienced, life doesn’t always turn out the way we hope or plan for it to be. When that happens, we may strategize as to the reasons, much as do they that are grieving bargain in order to diminish their pain.

Expectations, whether great or small, relate to future prospects. They almost always involve waiting for something. (Patience will be the subject of a later musing.) If what we expect doesn’t turn out the way we planned, then we are disappointed. Someone once said, “Have no expectations and you’ll never have to be disappointed.” Still another believed that without hope or expectation one lacks the energy to move forward or plan.

Where do expectations come from?

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Likely there are a thousand answers to that question, but I think, and some of the research shows, that our expectations may have their foundations in childhood. Eric Ericson, the renown developmental psychologist who studied under Freud, gave the world a psychosocial view of development that had as its basis, or foundation, the first “stage” of life which is Trust vs Mistrust. It is here in this first stage of life after birth that a child learns to either trust or mistrust the world, particularly through the relationships one experiences. Trust is built on met expectations.

We can trust the sun will come up (even if it doesn’t really “come up”) because every morning it does. We can count on it. We can trust our parents will care for us because for the most part, they actually do. Later in life trust and expectation walk hand in hand as the expectations we have of ourselves and others are met. We trust what we can count on and when we can no longer count on someone we lose trust and we become reluctant to form expectations. Hope diminishes and we tend to draw back and take fewer risks because we don’t want to be hurt.

There is probably tonnes written on this subject and I’ll not exhaust it here, but I would like to point out that when we have unrealistic expectations there is a greater chance for disappointment. It’s important for our own mental and emotional health to check things out before risking a lot of time and energy on something or someone who does not prove to be trustworthy.

These could be just the musings of this older man.  Perhaps some of you will relate well to what I am saying; some may disagree altogether. These are, after all, opinions. They are opinions, however, that have the expectation that life can be better.