Of troublesome expectations...

The word expectation has jumped out at me a couple of times in the last 24 hours, and I'm taking notice. It first hit me as I was reading Annie's 12/11/05 post http://newliferising.blogspot.com (forgive my ignorance of basic html-one of those gaps I referred to in my last post-any pointers would be greatly appreciated!) where she said that "True gratitude requires letting go of expectations." The more I think about it, that is one of the most profound statements I've ever read. I'm amazed that I'm just now understanding this (actually I'm disappointed, because I expected to have figured this out sooner...see what I'm talking about?) Unhappiness in large part simply boils down to not getting or not having what you want (or think you deserve), which implies that you expected something else in its place. And it doesn't even have to be something specific, just "not this," whether "this" is the quality of your relationship, or your Christmas present.

Logic would then say that if you remove expectation, you would lose most of your ability to be unhappy, because it wouldn't allow for the possibility of something better than what is. If any of you have ever read C.S. Lewis's PERELANDRA (2nd book in his space trilogy, which is a must read even if you're not into science fiction), then you'll remember how "The Green Lady" (read: Eve) had no concept of there being anything other than what was. So for example, if she was eating a certain fruit, it would never occur to her to think, 'I'd rather have a different fruit.' Her only thought would be 'The fruit I have is good.' She didn't understand what it meant to contemplate alternatives, and therefore, she had absolutely no expectations about anything in her life.

Now for "The Green Lady," having no expectations wasn't a problem, because she lived in a world that hadn't fallen, and so everything that happened was good. Even if she were to contemplate alternatives, the alternative would be just the same as the reality in terms of "goodness." But in a world where everything isn't good and there are numerous degrees of both good and evil, it's almost impossible to avoid having expectations about how your life should be.

This is all coming from a problem that I'm now discovering that I have in relationships. I expect too much and continuously get frustrated when she doesn't act in the way I expect, or more precisely, think I deserve. I make it a point with girls to go beyond every expectation they've ever had about guys, and I've been very successful at that. Just about every girl I've ever dated will tell you that I surpassed all who came before me in terms of how I treated her and how special I made her feel. I love that. It makes me giddy when I think up an idea for a fun date that I know no other guy has ever done, or will ever do for her in the future. And even in simple matters of seeking out time for each other or just doing the things I say I'm going to do even if it's not convenient for me, I'm really good about that stuff.

But unfortunately, these same girls will probably tell you that there were points in our relationships where they felt like they were expected to be (or react) a certain way and that I did a very poor job of hiding my disappointment when they didn't meet my expectations. It's true, and I'm ashamed. I can think of several specific instances where I acted disapproving when something I did wasn't received like I thought it should be or things just didn't go like I thought they would in my head. It looks like I'm in the business of expecting others to act like I do in relationships, and that's not good, especially since my motto is to do everything better than everyone else. I've got a lot more thinking and posting to do on this, but it's getting late. More to come...

A long blog with no resolution

The process of changing yourself is truly baffling, or at least it is for me because when I look at my life I see so many things that I want to be different, so many gaps between myself and what I am capable of being that I'm looking for one place to start and finding that one place everywhere. I once wrote in a journal that one's happiness is a function of how closely his actual self corresponded to his ideal self. I don't suppose it applies to young children however, because they often don't have much of a concept of self, and certainly not any judgments with which to evaluate a self: a precious, beautiful ignorance that is.

Going on, I've always thought that the way to create a happy life for yourself is to grow your actual self into the shape of your ideal self, that part of life's duties are to make yourself better, but I'm starting to question that a bit. What if instead of moving yourself towards the ideal, you were to shape the ideal to what you are? Is that a give up? I know that God loves us perfectly even though we are stubbornly human, and so from that I can see how everyone in a sense is fine just as they are. I'm not implying that God will love us more if we are less judgmental or more disciplined at our jobs, but I guess I'm just questioning whether it's better to strive towards these improvements (often to disappointing results, as I've found) or to begin looking at ourselves as things that are ideal in their own way. What if that is the freedom one needs to really step out and make changes?

I suppose what I'm getting at is just removing judgment when it comes to looking at yourself. But that's something that I've been doing for so long I can't even see it any more. I suppose that at one time I had a normal inner voice, but the judgmental voice has all but replaced it. And to further complicate the matter, I'm not a terribly introspective person...I live a lot of my life on auto-pilot, relying on routine, habit, and programmed responses to get me through probably 85-90% of my daily life, and so even being quiet and more importantly, aware enough to even hear my inner voice is a sizeable task in itself, and so being able to then pick that voice apart and separate the good from the bad seems almost laughably impossible...

I don't have a solution for skimming the negative brain chatter off the good though. If I did, I'd bottle it, sell it, make a million dollars, and then have one less item on my list of self-criticisms.

Even as I write that though, I'm thinking "I really don't have any right to say that I'm self-critical", like there's a part of me that thinks I don't have that many faults, like my life doesn't require all the vast improvements that my rhetoric would have you believe. And that's probably true to a certain extent. On paper, my life looks pretty damn good, good family situation, decent job, good friends, lots of freedom, etc. My problems don't register very high on the richter scale of bad human experience. The pendulum of my life experience doesn't swing very wide. (more on that in another blog some day). But I think that's part of my problem. I don't have jack to complain about, and so I feel guilty that I'm complaining. My major life crisis is that I have so much potential that I'm not realizing. I have gifts and talents that I'm not doing a damn thing with, and that's my main issue. Is that not shallow? Why is it so much harder to embrace what's good in my life than to focus on what's wrong? I'm sure that if I could learn the true value of all that I have going for me, it would give me the energy to really improve the things I want to improve. Ergh...Getting frustrated. Going to stop now. Apologies.