Aside: After a week of tantrums about my ‘less than optimal’ work environment, I remembered a post I previously wrote, and thought to bring it back into my thought stream 🙂
We make up hundreds of rules to live by and how we expect other people to behave, especially in relationships, be it a marriage, a romantic relationship or a friendship. So much so that the rules become a maze to negotiate, and that’s where simplicity goes out of the window and we create further complications for ourselves.
We all accept that there will be certain “rules” which need to be negotiated in any relationship, mostly centred around consideration of each other’s feelings or time. That’s normal and healthy. The problem comes in when we expect others to behave in terms of our little rules: this is right; that is wrong; this is how you should behave; that is how you should be. Other people seldom can live up to these rules and expectations. They in turn have their own, and it doesn’t always match the ones that we have.
Related of course, are expectations: you cannot have rules and not have expectations about them being met. And the thing about expectations are that they are seldom met, and if they are, then not for long.
If we’re really honest about it, we’ll acknowledge that most of our suffering and emotional pain comes from this gap – the gap between the expectation and the actual reality of the situation.
I expected her to love me. I expected him to become more successful. I expected my child to make better choices. I expected to have more – more money, more success, more love. But the reality of the situation is somewhat less than what I expected – and therein lies the source of my sorrow and discontent.
Can I change the reality? Is it in my power to do so? Perhaps, if it is my own life. If it concerns somebody else – then no. I don’t have the power or the right to make other people do what I want them to do. And if I can’t change the reality – if I have to accept the situation and the person as is – then all I can do is to let go of my expectations. Life becomes a whole lot simpler.
“I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not it can’t be helped.” (Fritz Perls “A Gestalt Prayer”)