Hope and Expectations
Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one
Our life’s journey to find contentment is a standalone escapade (it comes from within and embraces your peaceful mind) and no external source can make it happen for you.
Having said that, we more than often procure others in this pursuit of happiness and load them up with expectations of which they are often oblivious. That being said, expectations are somewhat a natural construct and we, ourselves are unaware that we pin up a zillion expectations with the people closest to us. Because naturally, you want what is best for you. Quite frankly, being selfless is kind of a hard task. And it requires a lot of premeditation to be out of this lethal web.
But it is very obvious that it is “expectations” that cause relationships to unravel, angers to flash, and what-once-appeared-to-be-good, to turn evil. We all essentially have that little child in us, which wants us to chase after good things. There is Santa. Someone or the other must have given us this childhood lesson that expecting anything from others is unreasonable. But still we do, we need to get out of this scheme. Only bad things stem from expectations. We can hope, but we can never expect!
But it is very obvious that it is “expectations” that cause relationships to unravel, angers to flash, and what-once-appeared-to-be-good, to turn evil. We all essentially have that little child in us, which wants us to chase after good things. There is Santa. Someone or the other must have given us this childhood lesson that expecting anything from others is unreasonable. But still we do, we need to get out of this scheme. Only bad things stem from expectations. We can hope, but we can never expect!
Hope is something we generate within and through our desires we project out into to the world – hope depends only on us: our dreams, our goals, and our thoughts. We hope for an outcome, we hope for things to happen, and we hope to feel a certain way when “it” happens. Hope does not need others to be involved in our journey.
Expectation is a totally different story because by its nature others are intimately (and often unintentionally) involved every step of the way. No doubt they are created internally as well, expectations are immediately infused with judgment and is criticality based on “what would we do.” Expectations are like giving out roles to others and then blame those who don’t play their role the way it sounds in your head. We always want to see, around us, things that sound right in our head. But it rarely happens. Everyone thinks differently. “Unfulfilled” expectations create detours and needless interruptions on our road to contentment.
 |
| A one way road you might regret taking |
Good Hope and Bad Hope
Hope is a good thing to get you started, it gives us the right amount of positive energy. But if kept close and embraced for too long, it has the potential to be the worst of evils and will only prolong our torments.
Hope can also be negative when it's false, or against all odds. Such is the case of the gambler who spends his time believing that the big payday is just around the corner, or the not-so-talented actor who dreams of success in the industry. Sure, it's possible that either of these people could realize their dreams, but the odds are stacked against them. In these instances, hope simply acts as a distraction from more achievable or realistic goals.
Hope is an attachment to a future that’s already perfect
Given that hope by its very nature is future oriented, one can say that people focused on hope are simply looking for an excuse to escape from the present. Part of the danger of looking toward the future is that you miss out on what's happening today, all around you. Even if your hopes for the future are realized, it's easy to continuously create new expectations, masking them as hope, which keep you from ever truly living in the moment.
Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. When you find yourself very angry in a certain situation - isn’t your anger derived from the fact that you saw (hoped) yourself succeeding?
Hope is an evil. And hopelessness is a blessing in disguise.
Surely, it doesn’t looks like a disguise at first, it looks bad and evil and what not. It seems to cause a sort of despair, right? But, what happens when you eventually get to that stage where you’ve lived in the despair long enough to realize that bad things exist in the world and are in fact a natural part of it? What happens is acceptance. Hopelessness leads to acceptance. After you’ve learned that bad things happen on a more constant basis that good things do, you accept this.
Hope will allow you to perceive good things happening in your future, but when they don’t guess what happens; despair. You’re filled with despair because the wonderful world you laid out in your mind, isn’t going as planned. Then you just get back to hoping for an even more wonderful future (a never ending self-destructive cycle).
Acceptance on the other hand lets you go on in life, but not by letting you imagine your life turning out all nice and superb, but by letting you realize that you can’t predict the future, that bad things happen in this world, and that through past experience you’ve survived all the bad things that have already happened, thus you can live another day to face the evils of tomorrow.
Acceptance lets you see the world for what it is. Acceptance gets rid of despair (leading to a happier life). And acceptance can only be gained by first experiencing hopelessness.
It is upto you to decide whether you want to experience more hopelessness and is it time to embrace acceptance now?
