A couple days ago I was walking along when a fellow and his dog appeared on the side-walk ahead. I expected him to put his head down and walk past without comment, as so often happens, but he surprised me: he said "good evening" with a smile, and continued on his way. The man's "good evening" startled me, to say the least.
The next day I was crossing a stream at a ford, leaping between rocks to keep my shoes dry. I've used this particular ford numerous times, and with the water so low, walking across seemed a simple task. As it turned out, a rock that looked steady turned out to be quite the wobbler, and into the water my shoe went. For the second time in two days I was beside myself.
Tomorrow is my first class at the local community college, and I'm a bit high-strung with nervous anticipation. "What will it be like?" I wonder..."How will it go?"
I thought about these questions off and on today, drawing on previous experience and whatever my imagination could conjure, to have a guess what tomorrow might be like. And then I remembered some of the incidents described above, and realized: I've been startled on several occasions lately, but it wasn't the events themselves that startled me, but rather my unrealized expectations. Perhaps I've been going about this all wrong.
When the man and his dog approached, I expected him to pass without a word. When he did not, I was thrown for a loop. The same proved true at the ford; I expected an easy crossing, but was undone by a not-so-cleverly-disguised-but-very-treacherous-rock.
In both cases, my expectations put me in a position to expect something that did not occur. More importantly perhaps, they left me closed to alternative possibilities, such that when something unexpected did occur I was not only unprepared for it, but also unprepared to be unprepared (if that makes sense).
The take-away then, may go something like this: that while expectations are sometimes useful, they can also close our minds, leave us unprepared, and in the worse cases, cultivate negative feelings. Consider, if I expect tomorrow's class to be the most difficult thing I've ever done, I might not sleep a wink and arrive at the start a haggard mess. On the other hand, if I expect the class to be cake-walk and it turns out to be anything but, well, I'll have started the race several meters back from the start. In either case, specific expectations of this sort can prove a real handicap.
But what about general expectations? For example, I expect tomorrow there will be a class, lasting somewhere from a few minutes to three hours, on the subject of psychology, taught by a professor with a masters' degree, and attended by approximately 25 students. I expect I'll be among them, barring some delay or some as-yet-unforeseen development. Apart from that, I don't know much else.
These general types of expectations seem useful, because they provide a broad sense of what may or may not happen. They help me make certain preparations, i.e. bringing a notebook for notes, approx. $50 for a text-book, and a healthy scepticism of whether I'm in the right class if the professor spends all three-hours talking about physics, fish, or a social history of the Salem witch-trials.
I suppose the point is that it can help to be mindful of your expectations, figuring out as best you can which might help you, and which might unnecessarily close your mind to the unexpected. As one of my favorite books says, "like a parachute, the mind works best when open." Letting go of a lot of one's expectations may do much in this regard. Maybe.
Happy Monday, friends :)
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