Expectations

 

My experiences with Buddhism are very limited. I sat with a Zen group for a few years, decided to take the ten precepts, and became a Buddhist. Shortly after I became a Buddhist the group I sat with changed and there were expectations of the members. These expectations were not easily met. They expected time and service that, with family obligations, were unrealistic. I withdrew from the group and stopped meditating – the second of which I regret.

It is expectations that I have been struggling with of late – mine and others. I try not to have expectations. I am nowhere near perfect with this, but I try. I find that expectations lead to disappointment much more frequently than they lead to delight. As a brief example, my 4-year-old has an expectation about how his sandwich should be cut – on the diagonal or straight across. If I cut it the right way everything is fine. No delight; just fine. If I cut it the wrong way there is major disappointment. If he did not have an expectation as to how his sandwich was cut there would never be this disappointment.

Often times, when I am going to be involved in something of any importance, I run through the situation in my head. I script the event. I build the perfect situation leading to the most desirable outcome. Clearly, this will not lead to good things. I have set the bar at an unattainable height and anything short of that is going result in disappointment. I try not to do that. I am often unsuccessful.

In my experience, Zen teaches complete mindfulness about what you are doing. At this moment, I am writing this post. I have no image of the result; no expectation of its quality or its length. Because of that, I am not worrying about how this post is going to turn out; I am just writing it. That is not to say that I will not bother to edit it before I post it or that I do not care about its quality. Far from it, but the experience of writing this loses something if my mind is occupied with those things.

I am not am not an expert with this, but I find that when I try to be fully in the experience of what I’m doing and I have no expectation for the result that I am happier for it. When you have expectations about something, you prevent yourself from fully experiencing your life at that moment. This happens because you are now comparing what is happening to what you what wanted to happen. By making this comparison you are now split. Part of you is experiencing and part of you is analyzing.  At the very best the reality and your expectation coincide perfectly, but you are only half experiencing it. More likely, however, you realize that the reality does not coincide with your expectations and you are disappointed.

What happens if you remove the expectation and live fully in the moment? Now you can fully enjoy the experience for what it is—ideal or not. But also, you remove (or at least significantly reduce) the possibility of a bad experience by never setting the bar at all.