Dear Friends, when we wake up every morning, don’t we all make a mental note of the things to do today, and even mentally prepare a short road-map as to how we are going to spend our day today accomplishing all the things planned out. Most of us actually go to bed planning the next day’s itinerary and we wake up with the same thoughts and carry them forward in the day.
Friends today our lives have become so complicated and burdened with the need to achieve so many things that we have become slaves of our own lives. We are constantly striving to do this, achieve that, fulfill this demand, anticipate the next one and try to prepare for the same. Our own needs, our family’s needs, our social needs, our materialistic needs, all of these have become our masters and continue to drive us every day in the race to fulfill all of them.
We have become so deeply entrenched in this rat-race of life, that we have forgotten how to enjoy life’s simple pleasures also. When was the last time you woke up and took your morning cup of tea in hand and spent 5 leisurely minutes sipping your tea and basking in the morning sunlight thinking of nothing? When was the last time you simply sat down with your lights turned down low and put on some soft music and enjoyed the moment? I am sure most of us will have a hard time recollecting such times because most of us have never had such “me-time” anywhere in the recent past.
So then friends I ask you the question, is it all worth what we are doing, when we don’t even have five minutes for our own pleasure? In our race to fulfill people’s expectations from us, are we doing justice to ourselves? Yes, all the people around us in our lives have expectations from us – and it is the undeniable truth. Be it parents, who expect you to be a good child, get a good education and career and take care of them in their old age; or be it a spouse who expects you to earn well, take care of the family and fulfill all their needs. No matter who it is, the expectations are always there – boss, subordinate, friend, peers, colleagues – anyone and everyone, the expectations are always there, only the order and intensity of expectations change, but they are always there as a big load on our shoulders.
And we all strive our hardest to live up to the various expectations and fulfill all of them to the best of our abilities. Sometimes we are successful and sometimes we are not. The times we are not, give us more grief and guilt trips and we fail to realize and enjoy those which we have fulfilled successfully, because we often view life from the perception of “the glass is half empty”, we never try and see that the glass is half full as well.
So it is this load of expectations that drives us to keep running the rat-race of life on a daily basis. We keep trying to please others and keep them happy, and in the bargain sacrifice our own happiness and enjoyment. We all are programmed that way so it is difficult for us to change. But if we genuinely want to be happy, we must make an effort to reduce the weight – we must try to reduce the weight of peoples’ expectations and opinions on us. Once we manage to do so, we will really start feeling light and agile and will be able to enjoy some moments of our lives for ourselves as well and that will be the way to true happiness for all of us.
We must strive to attain in life, but not at the cost of becoming slaves of expectations – Lose the expectations and gain happiness!!
Dr. Rajesh Mankani
