In 2014, I turn 60. That is not particularly old now in the 21st Century, but it is not young either. I'm trying to watch my cholesterol, my weight, my medication-controlled pre-diabetes. I exercise, and get regular physical and dental checkups in an effort to take care of my body. I travel in my car around 350 miles a week, which while not the great number of miles I have traveled in my employment in the past, it is still a significant number of miles, and miles in which there is always the possibility of being in an accident, perhaps a fatal accident.
Some might say that I am becoming obsessed with dying. Perhaps. But I would like to frame it in another way. I see myself as being obsessed with living. I desperately want to live for a long time, whatever age that is. Secure in my religious beliefs, I am not afraid to die, and actually I look forward to it. But not yet. Not now.
Because I don't know whether at my next physical check-up the doctor will find a cancerous lump and tell me I have six months to live, or if some drunk driver will t-bone my car as I innocently go through an intersection, I am grateful each day that something terrible did not happen to me in my past. Again, those ideas might be viewed as morbid, but I see them as not having an expectation--taking the day for granted, if you will--that I will be alive tomorrow. When I do wake up and realize I am still around, I feel a great sense of happiness and appreciation--each day. Indeed, in my personal religious observance, I express my desire to God and plead with Him to live another day--I just don't expect it.
I believe, and have written about this, that gratitude and happiness are inextricably connected. It has been my experience that the happiest people are those who are the most grateful. Conversely, those who do not feel gratitude are often unhappy. Look at yourself or those around you, and notice if the happiest people around you are the most grateful. And I my opinion, being happy does not necessarily mean you constantly wear a smile (although you might!), but rather, you feel a contentment or peace that, at that particular moment, life is pretty good!
I want to connect gratitude and happiness with expectations. To use my example above, If I expect to live through tomorrow, I may feel grateful tomorrow night, but over time, I will begin to take it for granted. It is just human nature. As I begin to take for granted or expect that I will live each day, my appreciation for that gift will likely diminish. As my gratitude diminishes for this gift because I have come to expect it, I likely won't be as happy or contented as I was when I was more appreciative.
What I am proposing is that reducing one's expectations significantly enhances one's gratitude, and as such, one's happiness or contentment or peace.
Does that mean that one should have no expectations at all? We can have the expectation or take for granted that the sun will rise tomorrow--something virtually inevitable, because of the rotation of the earth. This certitude can exist in some areas of natural life as well, but there can be no certitude in the uncertainty of human life. We certainly do not have full control over most of the important things in life--our health and the health of those around us, whether we'll get a job we desire, or, in my example above, how long I (or any of my loved ones) will live.
We can control whether we give our best effort; we control whether we act appropriately or not. Given health and ability, we can also control the quality of our work. We have free will, or agency. But we only have control over those matters over which we have complete control. especially matters of human behavior. Even then, we should have fewer expectations of others' behaviors than of our own.
What about the future? We can and should have goals, hopes, and ambitions for ourselves, and I believe it is acceptable to make appropriate demands on others, such as fidelity from a spouse or honest work from an employee. But those really aren't expectations.
So what about expectations of our spouses? Other than expecting fidelity and no abuse of one another in any form, I believe that should be minimal expectations--we have no control over their behavior. The more we expect from a spouse, the more likely we are to take them for granted, and the more likely we will not feel grateful for all of the good things they do for us. Taking a spouse for granted and not feeling or expressing gratitude for them places great stress on the relationship.
So what about expectations of our children? We should have great hopes for our children. We should help set goals with them. We can and should make certain demands on our children because they need them, like doing homework. But I feel we ought to maintain modest expectations of them, for their sakes. They ought to be seen as autonomous human beings, not extensions of us. Unintentionally or intentionally seeing them as a "Mini-Me" can cause them great harm. That is done out of our own needs and not of theirs; it springs from our own unresolved issues. Likewise, some parents give their children so much that their offspring come to expect more and more, depriving them of developing their ability to learn gratitude--because they won't feel it.
Also, keeping expectations of our children to a minimum reduces gratuitous disappointment when they decide to not do what we expected of them. There are so many parents that live sad, ungrateful lives because they had such high expectations of their children who have "disappointed" them and have allowed this disappointment to darken their lives.
Simply stated, expectations are impediments to happiness. When expectations are unfulfilled they cause gratuitous pain, and when they are fulfilled, they diminish gratitude, the most important element in happiness. I am really trying to keep my expectations at a bare minimum, and only have them when I have control over the results. I desire to be grateful because when I am grateful, I am happy, contented, and at peace.
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