A Note for the New Year. The image of a little girl waiting by…
By: Esther Maria Therese Chirayath
Tags: Expectations, New Year, Desire, 2021, Life

A Note for the New Year

Predictable and Unpredictable

The image of a little girl waiting by the door, looking at the far end of the horizon, with her starry eyes hoping for her father to return with a candy, is what I see while thinking about expectations. Though 2020 has disappointed me in more ways than I could have ever imagined, I still picture expectations about 2021. Life has taken unexpected twists and turns for most of us, not just this year but throughout our life and indisputably proved to us an umpteen number of times that our expectations are not always the reality. Yet, it is only human to hope for a happily ever after or a downer ending. No matter how many setoffs or surprises we receive, we tend to assign endings to things that are not within our reach.

Expectations are the aftermath of the human mind’s ability to draw possible conclusions to happenings around us or to the deeds of others and at times ourselves. Be it good or bad, these expectations once formed are often difficult to change and require great external forces to rotate its direction. Well now that I have defined expectations in the most possible scientific manner making it seem extremely dull, let us see what leads to expectations.

Desires

They are the true root cause of expectations. They have always been disguised with positivity, but they penetrate deep into human minds urging it to create illusions whose possibility of being a reality is as small as an Indian household accepting their lesbian daughter. At the same time considering that small percent of open-minded parents who did accept their lesbian daughters, we cannot completely deny that all our expectations lead to disappointments. Maybe the one playing with our puppet life did find our expectations amusing too. Even then our desires neither take our abilities nor our limitations into consideration. They run deep and wide, cluelessly jumping at every possible opportunity, and strike to realization when we hit the rock bottom. Sadly, after that no amount of kicking will prevent the sink. Yet sometimes that teeny tiny possibility that we hoped, ignites the spirit and we are not just back in the ring but also the Lord of Rings. Hence, giving the benefit of doubt to 2021 is not such a bad idea.

But I did hear someone saying that expectations are premeditated resentments and I couldn’t agree more. Well now I assume expectations do nurture the judging capability in humans and being a judgmental pest is the last thing that we want mankind to be after all that we went through in 2020.

Some do segregate the expectations into realistic and unrealistic ones with their sharp blade of thoughts but no offense, I find no purpose in this psychoanalysis and firmly believe that expectations, whether divided into categories or not, are extremely injurious to all types of health. Nature has weird ways of meddling into our lives. Not all unrealistic dreams get doomed, some do turn into successful roads and not all those well-planned realistic dreams get accomplished, some do crumble down for no reason.

As we all know when you aspire to achieve something and work relentlessly towards it the whole universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. But does it always? Well I have seen the universe go malfunctional and produce exceptions to this theory. There is yet another theory stated as an advice to many of us that one should not have expectations but should simply do the karma (duty). That piece of advice certainly did not lighten my frustration when the flight got cancelled despite me being early to the airport carrying all the necessary documents.

Taking all the theories stated and their exceptions into consideration, and after further contemplation I come to the conclusion that life is a complex molecule with a high percentage of surprise elements. Though happy to have given that most boring definition to life, I suppress my urge to sound boring and simply end saying enjoy life as it comes, have expectations, embrace the ups and downs, build up the resilience and enjoy the predictable and unpredictable because the universe is itself a speculated mystery.

Hence, let me wish you all a New Year with lots of expectations and may each on of you have the strength to have expectations, proving them wrong or right is just another piece of cake!