A very good morning to all my T-Talkites. A new day, a new thought and a new point of view to share.
Today I am going to share my thoughts on something which is omnipresent in our lives i.e. expectations. Expectations are part and parcel of our everyday lives. Expectations come in all sorts of different forms, sizes and nature. Expectations do not discriminate between relationships or between people or even animals. Expectations simply come naturally to all of us – they flow like the river through us all and each of us, no matter how much we deny it, is drowned in the ocean of expectations always.
The problem with us is that we human beings are selfish. Whatever we do for someone, whenever we do something, we expect something back in return. We are greedy by nature and hence many a times we even keep these barter system expectations from our pets as well. We do not spare even the poor animals who are dependent on us for survival, who cannot even communicate with us properly, we keep expectations from them as well.
No relationship in this world is untouched by expectations. In many cases, keeping expectations is only but natural way of life – they come to us naturally without any efforts. It is not wrong to have expectations from people or the world at large, the only advice I give is that we cannot keep the condition of all our expectations to be fulfilled.
Parents expect their children to look after them in old age, children expect parents to leave them a bit of money so that they can have a comfortable lifestyle. Teachers expect students to study hard and get good grades, voters expect politicians to work hard and bring welfare to the people. Every nook and corner of our lives is full of expectations. Some are realistic whereas some are not.
As I said, if we expect all our expectations to be fulfilled, if that is our pre-condition, then we need to be prepared for extensive disappointment as this will never happen. We need to be realistic and try to have as few expectations as we can in the first place. The point behind this is that when you keep expectations and when they do not get fulfilled, then you end up being disappointed, but if in the first place you do not keep many expectations, and when they do not get fulfilled, still you are none-the-better off as you have already cushioned yourself for the disappointment.
The sanest thing to do is to not keep too many expectations about too many desirable outcomes – just keep doing your karma without giving a thought to the outcome. If we keep expectations we get disappointed. Fate or destiny is not in our hands and what we cannot control, we shouldn’t even try to manipulate it to get the desired outcomes. But what we can control is our deeds – our Karma. So we need to just focus our efforts on that and just keep doing our deeds in our daily lives and leave the rest for god to decide. You will be amazed to find that this approach will cause you less worries, less pain and even lesser disappointments and you will find yourself living a much happier and content life.
Of course I agree that it is easier said than done, but nothing is impossible if you understand the cause and effect behind it and mentally if you condition yourself to start adhering to it to the best of your abilities. Victory will be yours in the battle of minds and you the winner will be a true winner ending up as a happy and content warrior who does not care too much about outcomes as his expectations are always under his control.
Have a great Day!
Dr. Rajesh Mankani
