Expectation = Double-Edged Sword

So today I met a friend, let’s name her Catherine. What Catherine said to me got me thinking about expectation. Expectation hurts. I know, you know, and everyone in this universe is totally aware of that. But how many of us realize that expectation does not only hurt, it motivates… It gives hopes.

Here is what she actually said to me, “You know I really did love him, don’t you? He was everything I cared about, I thought about. He still is, as a matter of fact. He was like the center of my universe. And if I were a star, my orbit is nothing but a circle around him, with super tiny radius. Like, super close. But why did he do all those things? He was supposed to love me back, he was supposed to treat me right, and he was supposed to be the best thing I’d ever had. But look at what the relationship led us to.” I couldn’t think of anything other than it was good for her that she came to the decision to break up. His ex couldn’t meet her expectation, meaning, their relationship was nothing to expect to.

This kind of expectation is the kind that come from a Catherine, a girl so full of herself she sky rocketed her expectations. And these expectations had nowhere else to go except to go down.

I couldn’t help but wonder. If expectation hurts and every ones were aware of that, why would they still expect?

Or maybe every once in a while we’ve found ourselves in the lowest state of our minds, we’ve hit rock bottom and expectation is the only thing keeping us in one piece. We never realize because we gave it another name. We named it Hope.

Good thing about expectation is it does not just hurt. At some certain points and circumstances, it can only be our only drive to keep going, to keep fighting. The thing is, in every war, as a soldier, we got to know when to keep fighting and when to surrender. Not to confuse taking a leap of faith and be blinded by mere expectations, or so called hopes. Because more often, things don’t go as expected.

So is expectation good for our souls? Or is it bad? 9.9 out 10 people asked about expectation and what it could do to their lives said bad thing about it. It’s like the word “expectation” itself has brought negativity out of everyone’s mind. Maybe we should rename it? Maybe we should call it “surprise”? That way we can never know whether the surprise will be pleasant or unpleasant. Or maybe we should just accept it the way it is. That it is a double-edged sword, it can kill the enemy, but it may kill the one who’s holding it.

 

Bad Relationships = Degenerative Diseases

“Trying to change old habit is like fighting a war in your head – a draining and exhausting skirmish that makes you wonder at your chance of survival,” – Richelle E. Goodrich

When trying to change is not only a war in your head, but a war in the other’s head as well, or may even be a real war, the one happens not only in your head. The one happens outside your head, through your little lips and handy hands. When a war for the relationship is a war for real, with your boyfriend/girlfriend.

Then it becomes a disease to the relationship. I think of unhealthy relationship as if it was a disease, a degenerative disease. It will become worse eventually, as time goes by. And nothing we can do to make it healthy again, nothing we can do to fix it. We can’t cure degenerative diseases, what we can do is prolonging the life expectancy, but not curing. Maybe increase the 5-years-survival rate. So did every doctors said in their highly sophisticated language. 5-years-survival rate. When it comes to relationship, is it also going to be 5 years? Or should it be 5-months-survival rate?

But then again, there is research, invention, or whatever we name it but someday we hope we’d find a cure. Through a long process of thinking and trying, of trials and errors. But somewhere along the process, will death precede? Which one will come first? The cure? Or death?

Then we wonder, will love ever be enough? To save our unhealthy relationships? Or will it just prolong the life of the relationship where it’s gonna face death eventually? Or should it just be dead and then we can move on and have another relationship, hoping this one is gonna be a healthy one? Should we wait and watch the death precede the invention of the cure? Or should we end it? Or should we keep our faith that the cure will eventually be invented?

The question is, “Do you still have faith in your faith?”

Life = Inception of Options

I bet we all are pretty familiar with the saying “Life is all about choices”. I couldn’t help but wonder. If life were all about choices, why wouldn’t anyone accept being an option?

When we’re feeling down and desperate we tend to do a lot of things without thinking enough about them. We started to look for answer or so we called it as. But what we actually looked for were excuses. Whatever those are calming. Not answers. We started to open our Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and so on. We followed all of those accounts providing us with a lot of bull shit words and sentences. But what it really did was to bury us even deeper in our desperation. We read about “Stop letting yourself be an option, we make choices. We’re not options”. Reading that we thought “Yes!!! Life’s all about choices and I’m gonna make mine and I won’t let anyone… Anyone positioning me as his option.” What we failed to realize was if every ones have to make choices for their lives. Then every ones are gonna be options for each other, aren’t they? It is like the inception of options. We are options of options. Options choose us among other options.

How about we forget about “making choices” and “being an option” as a singular event. How about we start putting those words together as one. The thing is not about us being options. It’s about us making tough choices and be responsible for them. And we let every other ones making their choices (where we are one of the options they need to choose) and let them be responsible for their choices.

This way we can be in peace, with ourselves… and with others. Only when we realize that we can only control what we do have power over and we stop craving of control over what we don’t, incredible things happen. Or so Steve Maraboli said, and I do believe in Him.