Expectations Will Break Your Heart

I've said it before and will continue to say it: expectations will break your heart. This is not to say that you shouldn't have hopes or dreams or goals. You absolutely should. These things make for a rich life. But expectations are more about being attached to particular outcomes. This is where we get into trouble. God and the universe are loving and generous, but you need to get out of your own way. 

 After my miscarriages and the loss of my daughter, I spent WAY too much time living in the land of "supposed to be". I was supposed to have a baby now. This was supposed to be our first Christmas as a family of five. She was supposed to be taking her first steps. And on and on. These losses made me feel as if my heart had been ripped out of my chest and stomped on and living in a place of "supposed to be" wasn't helping. You don't "get over" loss but you can learn to heal. I didn't start to really heal until I switched from thinking about what was supposed to be to accepting what really was. 

Like many of life's lessons, it's a lesson I've found myself relearning with my husband's dementia.  I had expectations about how midlife was supposed to look for us.  My dreams involved long conversations and traveling the world, not dementia and daily visits to the nursing home.  But complaining that we never got to go to New Orleans (or wherever) is an energy suck.  I intend to move forward and the only way to do that is by accepting what is, not obsessing over what might have been.

 I'm a huge fan of hope. I like to joke that it's my drug of choice. But just like an actual drug, we can become addicted to hope and use it to not look at reality. 

 We get all caught up in our expectations. This is what marriage or parenthood, or love or work is supposed to look like.  When life doesn't meet our expectations, we are disappointed and dismayed.  There must be something wrong with us or wrong with the world.  But if we can shift just a little bit, we can manage our expectations.  If we can release our attachments to outcomes, we can better appreciate what we actually have and actually get.  

Can you think of a time when you really had your heart invested in something that didn't end up happening but turned out be to a win anyway?  We've all had these experiences.  The Dalai Lama said, "Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck."  Yet if we're not willing to relinquish our expectations, we will never see these situations as a stroke of luck.  We will cling tightly and be sad and get stuck.  Things didn't turn out exactly the way we envisioned them, so they don't meet our standards.

But what if we can meet life head on with an open heart and mind?  We may not be able to completely banish our expectations (we're only human after all).  But what if we could temper or moderate them?  What if we could adjust them on the fly?  Isn't this really what optimism is about?  Finding the best in any situation?  You will find yourself in places you didn't want or expect to be in.  This is just the nature of life.  If you're never uncomfortable, you're probably not growing either.  But uncomfortable doesn't have to mean bad or wrong.  What happens if we release our expectations and lean into the discomfort of the unknown?  

Dream big.  Make plans.  Set lofty goals.  By all means, please do these things.  But remember that a detour is not the same as a derailment.  Practice a willingness to let your expectations go.