A mother, a home maker, has so many roles to play from the minute she blinks open her eyes to nightfall. In those hours she has to manage to make her husband have a happy wife, her kids have a caring and responsible mother, her in-laws have a good daughter-in-law, her friends have an available time slot if not a decent friendship, her relatives to keep in touch with, her house to look after and keep maintained, her help to keep satisfied, forget a great career if she has pets I think she is doomed.
Are you a home-maker? No? Me neither. Don’t worry you won’t get away with it, even if you’re just a 5 year old, people are expecting you to rise up to their standards of expectations. Everyone has relationships and that’s what human beings are about, we have become social animals with great expectations for our social endeavours.
What is the cost of being this social animal? Your health? Your time for yourself? Self worth and your identity?
Many people sacrifice to be someone they’re not everyday to fulfil others expectations (willingly or unwillingly) and feel stuck after a point in time, forgetting their way back or forward. It’s not wrong to do things that make you happy because that’s exactly what makes you who you are. That identity must only be your choice to alter, by choosing to do things that gives you immense joy wether through building others or spending time on yourself.
When he was a little boy he had dreams of flying a plane, of being a writer, of being a dramatist, a world best fire-fighter, may be a violinist. He had dreams just like you and me. Then he was acquainted with one relationship after another and he let go of all those tiny little hopes of making himself feel accomplished, happy and proud. ‘You will be a doctor, just like your father.’
Building relations is like collecting tools, they help you build your life. We expect things from the people in our lives. I am trying very hard to meet everyone’s expectations I know. I have expectations from everyone I’ve met or known and now decide to give them a chance to understand and chose to help me or NOT. That’s right they can say no to me. All my acquaintances and people, were born to reach their own heights and not to be who I expect them to be. My father doesn’t have to take out time for lengthy conversations with me everyday just for me to know he cares, my mom doesn’t have to be able to guess what’s upsetting me 24/7 just to make me feel like she knows me.
I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.
Bruce Lee
It’s very easy to have expectations from others and a challenge to guess and fulfil another person’s expectations from you.
Why do we latch our relations with expectations, why do we not give them a choice? Why are the relationships conditioned on our expectations fulfilled? When a person does fulfill your expectations out of choice the feeling is unmatched, unlike when they do it with the fear of keeping the relationship intact.
A healthy relationship would then be where mutual expectations needn’t be guessed but communicated and understood, fulfilment of which is not mandatory/forced and burdensome, but out of choice done with a sense of love and a bit of pride.
So what happens when you are not willing to fulfil someone’s expectations, then you communicate with regret for not being able to be their support on the matter. May be you will find the will to do so in future but your relationship will come through if you both just want to be in it no matter what.
We need to understand that it’s not barter where I build you so now it’s my turn to be built by him/her. We give ourselves wholly to build the pillars of our relationships so that the roof is intact and ,nothing can shake it .We trust eventually when we know the pillars’ strength is strong enough to hold in spite of unfulfilled expectations.
So chose to make those pillars out of trust or fear. Do you wish to extend an understanding hand to a friend who can’t make time for you, to a maid who always goes to her village every alternate weekend, to your spouse, family, relatives everyone? Question this in every relationship ‘what are the pillars really made of?’ and it will be a lasting and meaningful one.
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