Great Expectations

In Great Expectations, Pip was treated a taste of wealth with the expectation of becoming a gentleman in the society. When things eventually did not work out and the reality was a lot colder than he expected, his life fell into ruins.

I was having drinks and chatting away with a few friends the other night. During the conversation, one of my friends told us that he recently signed up with an online dating website to try his luck with love. It has been a few months now. Apart from occasional messages with others, he hasn’t found anyone yet and he started to feel frustrated. The conversation led me thinking about the role of expectation in our lives again. Similar to Pip we consciously or unconsciously expected a lot of “things”, either on others or on ourselves. We live in a society that is so tightly knitted together now that sometimes it feels like we are just constantly spending our lives fulfilling each other’s expectations.

When we grew up we were expected to behave in certain ways (and sometimes rightly so) and eventually we learnt to build expectations on other people. When I was a kid, I expected to be rewarded whenever I did something good or did well in school, I expected to get good grades if I worked hard; I expected people to like me if I treated them well. Of course at the same time my parents expected me to behave like a responsible kid, expected me to do well in school and expected me to be generous and kind to other people. Life became a constant exchange of expectations with different parties. In an ideal world, this exchange of expectation would balance out each other and we would all be living in a rose garden. However, the reality is that a lot of times, the gaps between the expecting and the expected are so huge that it is just a void of endless disappointment.

So how much is too much when it comes to expectations? Or should we even attempt to expect anything? Or should we just stop expecting but start doing? In my friend’s case, of course I have heard a lot of success stories with online dating, and I had witnessed quite a few myself. But at the end of the day, we are dealing with real human beings no matter how virtual they sound on the website. Online dating website for me is a cluster of expectations being posted publicly hoping to achieve a balance with other expectations through the text of individual profiles. No matter how virtual the website is we are still dealing with reality here. Of course the chance of meeting the right person could be higher because expectations were laid bare on the profiles like products on the supermarket shelves. However, this still does not guarantee a fair exchange of expectations between individual members on the site and someone bound to be disappointed. At that time I suggested my friend to lower his expectations (in terms of success rate) so he would be less disappointed.

As rational as I might sound, I still had times that I put myself into dangerously bad positions when my own expectations failed me. For example, when I didn’t get into the law school I wanted after months of studying extremely hard, I nearly just gave up my study life right there and then. Eventually ration kicked in and I peeled myself off my bed again and registered for another course at the eleventh hour. That incident was a cold hard reality check that taught me I could work as hard as I could and expect as much as I wanted to, the truth is nothing is within my control. Expectations then started to become a reality check mechanism for me. They became outcomes or options I could expect, but then I would always need to have plan B, C and D to buffer my fall if my original expectation did not come into fruition. I also constantly remind myself I should expect less to be disappointed less. Does that mean I am immune to disappointment? Certainly not, I still get disappointed with myself, or things happening around me from time to time. But the time I needed to peel myself off my bed now is certainly shorter.

For some, the tactics of “Expecting less to be disappointed less” might sound a bit pessimistic. But for me it is a survival skill that pragmatically balances goals and ambitions with reality. The less painful the disappointments are, the higher the chances of me getting back on my feet and look for options to rectify the situation I am in to achieve my goals.