Expectations

If your expectations are great, that is, if they exceed reality, you may be disappointed – or either your name is simply ‘Pip’, and I’m quite sure it is one of those two. One way to mitigate this would be to attenuate expectations to match reality, thus disappointment never occurs and satisfaction can be realized. This is a trifle more difficult than it sounds, however, as situations are rather dynamic, and situations are dynamic because people and the environment that they inhabit are dynamic. One may expect an encouraging word to sustain joy in another for a week on end, but may be disillusioned to realize the spark did not last past a few seconds. A child may expect a Christmas morning gift that they have desired for at least 11 months to be all-satisfying and that they will never want another gift besides; that is, until it breaks or gets replaced by a newer model or they simply grow tired of it by the afternoon of the day our Canadian friends celebrate as Boxing Day. A child – or many adults for that matter – may expect that if they really focus hard enough and intently enough they can channel the “Force”, like ‘Star Wars’ jedi, and telekinesis will become a reality for them. They are invariably disenchanted when the pencil remains still on the desk; a few go on trying to beat back the disillusionment with illusion, and furtively blow on the pencil to convince their friends they are in touch with the mysteries of the universe; a rarer few still pursue this as a career and become professional pretenders, I mean, magicians. What may have reignited the wonder and awe in these would have been to realize they do possess the ability to exert a type of force, of which Newton aptly helped to characterize and quantify. Rather than hold out one’s hand like a crossing guard in an attempt to push the spoon across the counter from across the room and become disappointed when this did not happen, they should have realized they could have simply walked over and exerted a very real force on a very real object and moved it anywhere in the room at quite an alarming velocity; that is, they could have simply grabbed it and carried it along or thrown it. There is, indeed, mystery and majesty in even picking up and moving a simple object across the room, but this wonder is forgotten and the extraordinary seems ordinary when we do it every day.