E X P E C T A T I O N

If there ever is a way
Will someone please tell me?
Is there a way?
How do i find a way... to get rid... of all expectation...
Ruiner of relationships, weakener of spirits, catalyst of postponement, mother of waywardness, giver of grief, taker of sleep, and god of all life's problems, expectation seems to be the one thing i can neither understand nor escape. It drives me to think crazy things, and then do even crazier things like writing this blog. I feel weak, defeated, and dwarfed by this phenomenon that deserves neither my attention nor time. I can't write about my bad experiences with expectation here on this public blogpage but trust me when i say its given me a lot of numbness in my head. I think i could even establish a link between my previous blog and this one... maybe the subject of this blog led to the writing of that one.

Anyway, we all expect certain things from people. I'm trying to break this is into something very simple. Although i have a knack of complicating things, I'd like to keep this really simple. Let me start again. We all expect different things from different people. We expect our parents to love us no matter what, take care of us no matter what, stand by us no matter what, and many other 'no-matter-whats'. We expect our younger siblings to be good and older siblings to be our friends and understand us. We expect the milkman to bring us milk everyday, the newspaper man to bring the newspaper, and so on. We expect our friends to do a lot of 'no-matter-whats' as well. Same for our girlfriends/boyfriends. Thats all very good. Perfect. The line is drawn so nicely..
So whats wrong?

Here's where it gets bad. Here's where it gets complicated. Here's where the line is crossed. When we cease only to expect and start to expect MORE and MORE out of the people we LOVE. Its simple. But deadly. Lets face it - we're human beings. Most people think that the human race is the most intelligent and hence superior species on the planet; but let me tell you, thats far from true. We're flawed from the word go, too complicated in our thoughts, approaches, and physical construction. There are many species that are far more simple, productive, and effective. So whats the difference? What am i getting at? What differentiates us from them? The answer is FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS. Not that other species don't have feelings and emotions. Many of them do. But at a level thats simple enough for them to be able to live with themselves peacefully during the course of their lives. I guess our inbuilt complexity and confusing emotional systems are the price we have to pay for being, well, a more evolved species. Maybe sometime in the future we will go back to being normal and simple and then our lives wouldn't be half as complex as they are now. After all, the universe is all about cycles and equilibrium and further evolution is inevitable.

So how do we know when to expect, what to expect and how much to expect? I wish i knew. Deep down inside i think i do. I only wish that that knowledge would supercede the one thats creating havoc inside of me and all around me. I need to learn to unexpect. Unexpect - is there even such a word in the dictionary? No there isn't. I just checked. We all need to learn to unexpect. I've realized one thing - unfulfillment of expectation leads to worry and disappointment, worry and disappointment lead to anxiety and depression, and anxiety and depression lead to negative thoughts and wastage of precious time. So whats the point in vehemently expecting something from someone? There's no point. Even though that may make us less human or whatever. We don't need at every point to prove that we're human anyway. If rational thinking is the boon of being human then i think all of us are still animals. But in the end thats what we are. Just another species of animals living in a different jungle.