Tuesday, August 25, 2009

If you remove your expectations from me, you are free to receive my gifts.

I once read that depending on your expectations, you can spend your whole life being pleasantly surprised or sadly disappointed. Wow.

How wise was one man in the recovery program, after a few years of attendance, to utter that he had just about given up on what to expect and just lived to see what would happen next? Wow.

Often, our expectations of a situation or person are based upon what we want to happen or see. Reality is to see what we see and to know what we know. Do we see what we want to see and not what we need to see? Do we need an “illusionectomy?” Wow.

I think one of the hardest parts of life is to see reality. Denial and delusion abound. They are really useful for keeping fear and pain at arm’s length. So, we keep expectations alive and complain often when the person or life falls short. Wow.

Truth may be painful, but at least you can deal with it. Wow.

The wise man above was quite peaceful internally. He had hopes but not expectations. He knew that having the latter would set him up for resentment, anger and disappointments. He also knew that we can become so blinded by what we expect that we fail to see what is truly available to us.

One lady in my group had cried for years and said she just wanted to be happy. Who knows where she got that concept? I suggested that life was not always happy. It was possible to have a happy life with some unhappiness in it. A light went on for her. She later said that even with her husband drinking, she now felt content. She had expected more and was missing the moments. Wow.

If you want all of your birthday presents wrapped in green paper and all you get is a darned blue paper, are you letting expectations destroy your day? Wow.