I spent all of yesterday bringing old Daily Reminders over to the website. I didn't expect to, but that's how it turned out. You see, I knew I wanted to write something about expectations today, and I thought, Why not put all the previous ones on this topic on to the website, too?
I didn't expect there to be so many! And I didn't expect that I'd still be finding, reading, copying, pasting, editing, categorising & tagging them, late into the night.
Expectations! They're everywhere!
(You can see all the Daily Reminders I found if you do a Search 🔍 on the website for ‘expectations’ to locate the Tag → Like this.)
On reflection, now I'm surprised there are so few. Because isn't this the main thing that minds do: expect?
The etymology of the word is ex- (‘thoroughly’) and spek- (‘to observe’) and yes, that's their thing, isn't it? Thoroughly observing… and then talking about what they see. Constantly.
In fact it's such a never-ending stream of ‘thorough observation’, we fail to notice it most of the time.
In ourselves, at least. It's easier to spot in others, isn't it?
Fireworks 🎇
Case in point: first thing Sunday morning, I was getting ready to go out cycling for a few hours. My daughter, for reasons known only to Jobert (the name she has given to the Daughter Ego Construct 📦) had decided on a whim, to do get up early and do some baking.
Trouble with doing stuff like that on a whim, is that you might not have all the ingredients you need. And if your expectations of what ingredients should (🚩) be available to you aren't met, there could be fireworks.
(There were fireworks, dear reader 🎆)
“Please go away! You're really annoying me!” 😡
(Crash, bang, slam.)
It was super-obvious to me that the fireworks weren't really anything to do with kitchen inventory (which is neutral: simply what is), they were a result of the mind's expectations not being met.
(I may, or may not, have kept my mouth shut on this one – I'm not sure I'd had coffee by this point, and was frankly a bit taken aback by it all. I wasn't expecting to come down and discover pre-breakfast bake-off 😆)
Not fifteen minutes later, I'm crashing around, slamming doors and creating fireworks of my own, because I'd gone outside to discover that the weather forecast had been so wrong, I was going to have to completely revise all my clothing choices. (It was tipping it down. It wasn't supposed to be.)
And of course from inside the situation, it looked like my ire was entirely justified, whereas to any outside observer it would have been super-obvious that my fireworks weren't really anything to with the weather (which is neutral: simply what is), they were a result of the mind's expectations not being met:
- The weather forecast should (🚩) be accurate
- The clothing choices I made should (🚩) be correct
- I should (🚩) remain dry for the beginning of my ride at least
- I shouldn't (🚩) have to spend 10 minutes doing battle with those really awkward and difficult-to-put-on waterproof overshoes I thought I'd get away with not having to wear today
- I should (🚩) be on time to meet me friend.
And on (and on) it goes.
We live an inside-out existence. Our feelings (and fireworks 🎆) are a reflection not of circumstances, but of the mind's automatic reactions to those circumstances.
And as Byron Katie said,
“When I argue with reality, I lose.
But only 100% of the time.”
💟
Giles
Related
Everything tagged with “Expectations” … for now!!