Expectations, Great Expectations

I was a new bride, newly pregnant, when my mom-in-law brought me some chaat. As we sat eating, she kept looking at me, almost expectantly. I could sense her disappointment but couldn’t quite understand why.

Now, 36 years later, I think I do.

I could have thanked her for being so thoughtful. I could have told her how delicious the chaat was, how much I was enjoying it. But my blissfully oblivious younger self simply didn’t think to say any of it.

I was enjoying the chaat. She was waiting to hear that I was. And somewhere between my unspoken pleasure and her unfulfilled expectation lay a small disappointment. One that has stayed with me for 36 years.

*

Most disappointments, I have come to realize, begin with an expectation.

It is when we expect that we are disappointed.

A simple enough truth. One we all know and yet spend an entire lifetime failing to learn.

We continue to expect.

We expect affection, attention, consideration. Gratitude for what we give, appreciation for what we do, and love in return for the love we offer.

We write little scripts for the people in our lives. What they should say. How they should respond. What they should remember. How they should make us feel.

And when they fail to follow the script, we feel hurt, neglected, sometimes even unloved. We mistake the absence of expression for evidence that we matter less than we believed. But instead of speaking up, we swallow the disappointment and carry on. Or so we think.

For disappointments have a way of quietly accumulating.

Somewhere in our minds, we begin to keep account. Entries are made. Balances calculated. Debts accumulated. And one day, something quite insignificant becomes the final entry.

A forgotten birthday. An unanswered message. An invitation that never came.

And suddenly, years of accumulated disappointment come tumbling out.

We lash out. We accuse. We withdraw. We revisit old wounds and summon forgotten grievances. A small moment becomes a battlefield.

The anger eventually subsides, but the damage remains. Our dignity compromised. Our relationships bruised. Words spoken that cannot be taken back.

An expectation became a disappointment. The disappointment became resentment. And the resentment robbed us of something far more precious than whatever we had hoped to receive.

Our peace.

All because life did not unfold according to a script written entirely in our own heads.

And that, perhaps, is the great tragedy of expectations.

*

But then, is it really possible to live without expectations? Expectations, after all, are woven into the fabric of our relationships. They are part of what makes us human.

Perhaps the answer is not to give up expectations, but to learn to live with them differently.

We expect others to love us in our language, forgetting that they may be speaking an entirely different one. We forget that they are not us. They carry different histories, different insecurities, different ways of expressing and receiving love.

Perhaps we need to be a little less certain that our way is the only way. A little more generous in our interpretations of others. A little less quick to feel slighted.

To recognize that not every omission is an insult. Not every silence is indifference. Not every unmet expectation is a measure of how little we matter.

And perhaps, most importantly, to stop expecting people to read our minds. For how can we hold someone responsible for failing to fulfil an expectation they never knew existed?

Perhaps we cannot live without expectations. But we can learn to hold them a little more lightly.

To say what we feel. To express what matters to us. To ask for what we need rather than quietly resenting its absence. And when expectations go unmet, to forgive a little more generously.

And sometimes, simply to let go.

*

I think back to that afternoon, 36 years ago.

Perhaps I could have been a little more thoughtful, a little more expressive. And perhaps my mom-in-law could simply have asked whether I was enjoying the chaat. I would have happily told her that I was. Very much so. A few words might have made all the difference.

And perhaps this is what life teaches us, slowly, over the years. To expect a little less, understand a little more, and be grateful for what is already there.

For when we loosen our hold on what we expected, we begin to appreciate what we have been given.