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expectations (plural noun)

1. a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.
2. a belief that someone will or should achieve something.
3. And then there’s the “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and EXPECTING different results”. 

     Well, what did you expect? I mean, things were going along pretty well, and then boom!  We have to stay home, then protests, then looting and rioting. No jobs, no school, no nothing as we once knew it.  There are many who say, things will never go back to the way it was, ever again. That’s probably a good thing, but at times, I catch myself thinking, “when will this stop”!?

     So, what was I expecting?  With my marriage, with my kids and grandkids, with my job, my boss and co-workers?  What was I expecting with racism, police brutality, politics? What was I expecting with my friends, my meetings, my church? My recovery?  What was I expecting of the world staying safe from germs?

     Many times, I’ve heard people say that they thought they’d be further along than they are.  It doesn’t matter how much clean time we have when we say this, the point is, we always have greater expectations of ourselves than the reality of our capabilities and circumstances.  I have said this many times, starting at about one year clean, and here I am thirty-five years and I still feel like I should be further along than I am, where certain things are concerned.  Such as my emotions, my physical self, my mental and spiritual self.  Not to mention, my creative self!

     I could tell you of all my expectations for myself at this point, but.. what’s the point? The real idea behind this is that we are way too hard on ourselves.  I am also way too ambitions in my expectations of what I expect to get done on a daily basis and in my life.  I wish I could do more, be more, love more, fix more, experience more.  I want to spend more time with my family and friends. When I don’t, I feel like have failed them somehow. I want to spend more time writing and in my photography. By not doing my creative needs I feel like I am not true to me.  If I do not behave as God would have me behave, I feel like I’m failing God. If I do not keep my house in order and clean, I feel I am failing me and my family.  The list goes on.  Expectations can be a source of building resentments, stress and depression. No Bueno!

     What can I do?  What can you do? When my sister Susie was alive and in recovery she used to say “If you don’t like what you see, lower your expectations”.  Lol.  I’m sure she didn’t invent the saying but we sure used it a lot back then.  Yet, there is truth to that statement, maybe, just maybe I’m expecting too much.  I expect the most of myself, but I certainly have expectations of my husband, grandson and others.  I remember a line that Barbara Streisand made in the movie “The Way we Were”, when Robert Redford said to her “You expect too dam much”.  She simply and calmly said, “yes, but look at what I’ve got”.  I thought wow, that is true. As my ex-husband use to say, “if you shoot for the moon, you just might hang your ass on a star”.  So there ya go!  I kinda lived my life by those standards, after I got clean, I wasn’t capable of it before then.

     So, yes, I strive to do my best and inasmuch as another person is capable of it, I have high expectations of them too.  Let me clarify, small children cannot do what teenagers and adults do, mentally or physically handicap people cannot do what people with all their capabilities do.  I do indeed adjust my expectations to the persons situation.  But even with those adjustments, I think I’ve expected too much of others at times.  In my recovery, I have expected sponsees and others to work a program pretty much like me.  Go to meetings, call your sponsor, work the steps, write, be of service.  Those are the basic foundations of recovery and I have always strived to do them to the best of my ability.  I do not understand people who have been clean a year or more and not worked a step. 

     Then it’s no surprise that I am often disappointed, saddened or dismayed by other’s behaviors.  Of course, over these thirty-five years I have learned to “lower” or “re-direct” my expectations.  If I didn’t, I don’t think I could have stayed clean.  People would have drove me nuts!  Lol.  I have learned to let everyone move at their own pace and in their own direction.  Don’t get me wrong, I still have some expectations of people, but I’ve brought them way down and I’ve learned to forgive, to let it go, give them to God.  I have learned that it’s none of my business the pace, the place, the way or the day that God has them working at.  Expectations can be both good and bad.  I just have to watch that I’m not too hard on myself, I use to beat myself up a lot when I was newer, now I know that my heart, my mind and my thoughts are in the right place and I’ll do my best with whatever is happening.  

     I have learned too, that most people are doing their best (I think) and if not, oh well, not my problem.  But what I’m struggling with these days is totally outside of myself and my home, it’s the world at large and all the mayhem I hear about on a daily basis.  I do expect civilized people to act like civilized people.  I am not saying they shouldn’t protest; I came up in an era of massive protesting, it was called the sixties. I don’t blame them at all.  But it’s the abusiveness I can’t handle.  So, my solution this month was to do a tenth step, and I did.  I have to look inward; I have to look at myself and see what is my part and what can I do to make it better.

      At this point, I feel like the best I can do to help with what is going on in the outside world is to not add to the hate and discontentment.  Not to post and re-post offensive, hateful, demeaning posts.  To present more good stuff out into the universe, like Love and goodness.  Which for me boils down to God and my grandkids, husband and family & friends. 😊.  To put a little recovery and hope out there.  And to offer an ear for those in pain.   I am still in quarantine and in real life, I do not like it.  But it beats the alternative of taking a risk that could kill my husband or myself. I’d much rather be safe than sorry.   This too shall pass. 

     I believe through it all, prayer is the absolute best thing I can do.  I pray every day for the virus to stop, for a vaccine and/or a cure.  I pray everyday for the people of our country to love one another and quit killing, looting and creating mayhem.  I pray for police brutality to stop.  It has always been here, all of my life, it’s scary.  I pray for a solution to these issues.  I pray for us all to be able to come out of this with grace and mercy and love and a stronger faith.  Not just in humanity, but in God. I pray to keep striving to do the right things for the right reasons. I pray for you all. 

     With that, my expectations are in place.  It’s ok to expect people to treat you decently and respectfully and of course, your expectations of yourself would be in alignment with what you expect of others.  We need to watch our “high achievement” attitudes and “I’m the best at what I do” expectations.  I get students like that in my class all the time. In fact, I was a student like that more often than not. Lol.  Not sure where I got this “perfectionist” thinking from. They tell me it’s a common trait of addicts and alcoholics, in a kind of all or nothing sort of way.  This can be a very fluid emotion, changing with the weather, circumstances and our thoughts of how things ought to be. How people ought to be. Especially, how we ought to be.

Question of the week:  How are you doing with your expectations of self, others and society at large?

    Expectation

In the case of uncertainty, expectation is event that considered the most likely to happen. An expectation, which is a belief that is centered on the future, may or may not be realistic. A less advantageous result gives rise to the emotion of disappointment. If something happens that is not at all expected, it is a surprise. An expectation about the behavior or performance of another person, expressed to that person, may have the nature of a strong request, or an order; this kind of expectation is called a social norm. The degree to which something is expected to be true can be expressed using fuzzy logic.

Wikipedia