My son had a highly hyped year-end 6th grade activity at the California State University’ at Fullerton’s Titan Center complete with bowling, pool, ping-pong, video games, and much more. When he returned from the field trip, I asked if he had fun. He said he had fun but it didn’t meet his expectations. My friend’s daughter recently attended her first school dance, in the 8th grade. When later asked ‘How was the dance?’ Her reply was, ‘It was lame.’ What did they expect? Obviously, more than what was delivered. They were both disappointed.
Unmet expectations are not limited to the fourteen and under crowd. Human nature is to dream and fantasize of what the unknown might look like, what might happen, what we think the something should look like, taste like, feel like, be like. We set expectations for people in our lives too, family, friends, employees, bosses, co-workers and neighbors. We expect people to behave or respond a certain way, then, when they don’t meet our expectations, we, too, are disappointed.
Setting expectations for yourself can leave you as disappointed as setting expectations for others. Let’s pretend the expectation set for myself was to lose two pounds this week. An achievable goal with good diet and exercise. Instead of eating a good diet and exercising, let’s “say” I ate delicious left over inside out German chocolate cake every day and instead of losing two pounds, I gained two pounds. Clearly, in my “hypothetical” example, I let myself down. I did get to eat some delicious cake but that wasn’t the expectation.
If expectations for events disappoint us and expectations for people disappoint us and expectations for ourselves disappoint us, is there any hope? Sounds pretty bleak. The good news is that though there are instances and certain people and actions that leave us disappointed, humanity never ceases to amaze us, to go above and beyond and exceed our expectations.
How many times has that happened to us in our lives? From people, employers, employees, friends and family we expect them to perform, act, do, deliver and be different things at different times in our lives. We can’t help it. Setting expectations is based on the rules and customs by which we were raised and taught. Setting expectations is human nature. So is being disappointed or being amazed.
What are our expectations for Spokane? The beauty of walking into the relative unknown is that we don’t know what to expect on a daily basis. We have researched and seen enough generally speaking to know to expect four seasons, less traffic, more trees and a beautiful house. Other than that, our expectations are minimal.
We are going to expect nothing and receive nothing less. Or, we are going to expect nothing and receive everything. Either way, we think Spokane will meet our expectations.
Editor’s Note: My husband finally read my blog. Last night he said, ‘I’m not going to read your blog because you lie’. WHAT?!? He said, ‘In the T-7 post, you said the laundry was done. The laundry is not done’. Who voted my husband to police my blog? I stand corrected, I misrepresented the facts, the laundry is never “done” in my house. There is always something to be laundered. For the record, there is no editor either. Please forgive all future exaggerations, truth stretching, poor word choices, incorrect punctuation and misspellings. The expectation for my blog is to write a minimum of 500 words each day. For me, expectation met. If you have other expectations for my blog, you must communicate these expectations to me, otherwise I am unable to address and manage to these expectations. BTW – 618 words. I exceeded expectations. Laundry is still not done.
multi-hyphenated-me 