Expectations happen more as a mirage than milestones.
Pluses and minuses between foreseen and realities are full of lessons in actual life.
Expectations of a mother from her kids are norms, but their weird behaviors when they are grown up turn whole scenarios into miseries.
While entering into new relationships, no matter if it is personal or professional, both sides expect to be mutual, trustworthy, and not only supportive but their presence shining. It is a frame of our mind. However, deviations and fights for personal space make living together uncomfortable, and at times, the whole picture is ruined.
It is to iterate that I am only talking about benefits and loss in untrue expectations and not examining other possible reasons for setbacks and failures.
Even too hot and too cold weather also irritates many people. The basic reason is that the temperature, either high or low, keeps them uncomfortable.
People who are ready to face variation in temperature throughout all seasons remain undisturbed.
These are elementary examples of what a range of expectations can do in our lives.
High expectations of class teachers during my schooling were certainly encouragement, but in this spectrum, I forgot to spur my qualities, and the outcome was less than expected.
Teachers, as guides, were talking about trends and repetition of methods. Thus, I was fully in that frame of preparation, as directed in schools.
I was doing everything to live up to their expectations.
No doubt grades and marks were the yardstick, but that was also prime time to choose where I could empower myself to excel, not only in subjects but in other faculties together.
I remember a small incident. I was good at preparing diagrams and labeling them, say in ten minutes. I got an appreciation of teachers for excellence every time.
This was not possible while sitting for an exam, and therefore it had adversely impacted my performance in totality. The error was not having expertise in drawing that diagram in three minutes in the stretch of solving many questions in three hours.
I had not practiced drawing diagrams in three minutes; I took more time in the exam, so I got less time to answer other parts of questions in detail.
I did less to prepare for the exam and life beyond that, taking my strengths into consideration.
Now come to the positive side:
In many instances, people are delivering more than expected. It is the positive side, where their abilities surpass the circumstances, and their final results surprise them too.
When we know the power of creativity and uniqueness, we perform exceedingly.
When we decide to reclaim our abilities, we leave behind the noises of people around and what they talk about what happened in the past, and eventually, new stories are created.
When I hear about the remarkable performances of students of last line in social order, I recall what the power of gifted talent and persistence can do. And I also question my own perspectives about entire episodes.
Expectations are the foundations of many innovations, indeed.
The moot point is how to save ourselves from unreasonable expectations of others and how to improve ourselves by expecting something hard today for a better tomorrow.
Here is what I mean:
