Expect Less and Find Joy? An examination of our expectations

What do you expect?

“Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Alice Walker

Wicklow Mountains Ireland

“EXPECT NOTHING”

When I was in Ireland, about seven years ago, I took a bus tour of the Wicklow Mountains. It’s a beautiful, magical area south of Dublin. Our tour guide had a bottle of Jameson’s Irish whiskey that he pulled out at each stop, and some little cups into which he poured a shot for anyone who wanted some. Besides the fact that we’d never get away with this over here, because someone would sue the tour company, it greatly enhanced the tour. He was a fun and funny guy. At one point, he asked us: ladies, do you want to have a good time tonight in Dublin? …Lower your expectations.  He may not get far with that over here, either.

Proof!

I didn’t want to have that kind of a good time in Dublin, so I have no comment on whether it works, but I think lowering our expectations is generally a good idea in life. Especially our expectations of others. And of ourselves, if we are too demanding. And, it may go without saying that our unrealistic expectations of others and those for ourselves are closely interwoven.

It has been noted that to expect too much of someone is to expectorate upon them. Surely this analogy is tempting, whether we have been the recipient of expectations or the disappointed expector. Not accurate since expect comes from ex-spectre, and expectorate comes from ex-pectoris, the chest. But it raises a question: in what ways can expectations be troublesome for us and burdensome for others? How do they impede our progress as human beings and how do they hinder our relationships?

Bill Bryson’s book (and now movie Wild) A Walk in the Woods tells you something about his expectations of backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. Since I’ve backpacked several sections over the years, I know whereof he speaks. At the time of writing, about 2000 hikers set out each year to hike from GA to ME and less than 10% ever make it. One hiker called home to be picked up after three days, saying this wasn’t what I expected. Two days later, he’s back, saying his wife made him return. Three days later, he phones again for a ride to the airport. “What about your wife?” asks the driver. His answer: This time, I’m not going home. The problem? Not the AT, but his projections, his expectations upon it.

Much of our expectation, of partners, of children, and of organizations, is built from the projections we carry. What if we practiced expecting those around us to be just themselves and nothing more? How might our relationships change?

In A Separate Reality, the sorcerer Don Juan tells Carlos Castenada that he must learn to reduce his wants to nothing. If we’d learn to reduce our wants to nothing, the smallest thing we’d get would be a true gift. For those of us who’ve lived with privilege, this is good advice.

“Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.”

But there is a huge gap between letting go our expectations of others that come from our own projections and giving up hope altogether. So many people got off the trail of life when their hopes were dashed and became bitter or cynical. My father was one of these people. He once told me there was no use in my going to college, because I’d just end up married with children. We used to kid that when he was about my age, he stopped filling the gas tank all the way because he figured he’d die any day. (He lived to 87) He was, after all, proud of his Scottish ancestry, if not exactly a genius. The weight of others’ low expectations and cynicism can be as burdensome as their projections.

DON’T EXPECT TOO LITTLE (the other side of the coin)

It would not be good for communities of people who have been adversely affected by the low expectations of society and themselves to take Don Juan’s advice, which was given to a white UCLA Professor from affluent background. For African-Americans, Native Americans and indigenous people, other marginalized groups, and for that matter women, high expectations coupled with compassion are their due.

And the bigotry of low expectations is not just something George Bush said. In my extensive interviews with Black residents of Springfield KY, almost everyone who had started out in segregated schools recalled fondly their teachers and their experiences, before integration. They had Black as well as white teachers. Currently, there are ZERO teachers who are POC in Springfield, even though the city is 24% Black.

What about our expectations of faith and religious community?

Wendell Berry writes that making a marriage and keeping a farm are nearly the same. Called ministry has been compared with a marriage, and I think buying a farm might be another good analogy for community and church life.

When one buys the farm and moves there to live, something different begins. Thoughts begin to be translated into acts. . . . It invariably turns out, I think, that one’s first vision of one’s place was to some extent an imposition on it. But if one’s sight is clear and one stays on and works well, one’s love gradually responds to the place as it really is, and one’s visions gradually image possibilities that are really in it.. . . Two human possibilities of the highest order thus come within reach: what one wants can become the same as what one has, and one’s knowledge can cause respect for what one knows.

Rather than coming to our lives each day like a disgruntled guest in an English cottage, expecting a “mean” meal, or like a petulant child disappointed and disillusioned, we might go instead as to a potluck meal, that wonderful mix of competition and cooperation, of contempt and compassion, where we bring the best we have to give, and choose from the offerings of others, TRUSTING that the meal will suffice and may even be complete, that joy may emerge. In fact something good is as likely to happen as something bad, especially in the warmth of human community.

 

Good thing I didn't lower my expectations, because I inadvertently met Marky Mark (aka Mark Wahlberg)