What You Thought Would Happen

Expectations. We all have them, and we are content when they are met, and are actually happy when they are surpassed. In most cases, as unfair as they may be at times, we are disgusted when they are not met. While expectations are a good thing at times, I find that in most cases they are not expressed and bring about more trouble than anything else. Let's look at one of my favorite stories, and I'll show you what I mean.

Cast your mind back to when you are a child and remember possibly the darkest children's story ever; Alice In Wonderland. In one of the 'scenes' Alice comes to a junction in the road and doesn't know which way to go. She sees a cat in a tree and asks him "Which road should I choose?" to which the cat questions "Where do you want to go?" Alice, taken aback by this answer replies by saying "I don't know." The cat then wryly says "Then it doesn't matter which one you choose"

Sidebar - Now, at this stage I'd like to point out that in the story every character represents different parts of Alice's psyche and there are many different ways to read into each different part of the story, but I'm using this part as an example for my point. Ok, back to the story.

Now I can only presume that Alice didn't get the answer she was looking for, and would probably be a bit bewildered and possibly even irritated by this response. The cat on the hand would, in my opinion, be feeling rather high-and-mighty having pushed his point across, even though Alice probably just saw him as being rude. But has this really helped anyone?

From a 3rd person perspective we can see that Alice was really asking for advice because she was, in this case, lost and needed help. The cat on the other hand was trying to make Alice see that she was wrong to ask the question in that manner, but wasn't going to tell her that because he wanted her to figure it out herself. He wanted her to do a bit of soul searching but she was busy on an adventure and wasn't keen to stop for anything but a drink of water.

This type of thing happens all the time. One person is on a mission to do 'something' and the other person is on a mission to rethink life in general. Because of these two different perspectives each person has a different expectation and when the two converse both parties walk away disappointed because their expectations haven't been met. Had they two parties sat down and spoken honestly and been open to hear what the other party was expecting no one would have had any hurt feelings.

But Alice was too busy living her life without thinking, and the cat was too stubborn to stop thinking and actually live by meeting people on their level. Now that doesn't mean that the cat was wrong, but it does mean that both parties have to put in the effort if anyone is going to walk away happy with the outcome.

This happens everyday in life. People expect something to happen and when it doesn't they discard whatever it was that didn't 'perform' because it didn't do what they wanted it to. The tragedy is that in most cases these discarded items aren't items at all, they are relationships with parents, boyfriends or girlfriends, siblings or just a great friend who failed to complete some impossible task like reading your mind and knowing you were secretly upset about an earlier event. And this is where the problem with expectations comes in...

Having an expectation is like having an opinion; you're entitled to it and I think not having one is a bad thing. But not expressing it is a problem, and not listening and understanding someone else's expectation is as much a problem.

So next time you feel upset about something take a second out and actually define what you expected to happen, and if it was a reasonable expectation. I suspect that if people did this more often there would be much less fighting in life...

I'd also like to mention Gareth my film directing friend because he asked me to.