April
1, 2007
The Surprise in Letting Go of All Expectations
It isn’t what you think it is…
Expectation: 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. Source: Wikipedia
My son is a wonderful mirror for me. It’s
uncanny. Sometimes I wonder if he is really
sitting next to me or if I just envision his
face on reflections of my own thoughts. It seems
every time we get together I come away with
a fresh look at something I thought I understood.
Whoever said, “We are our children’s
teachers,” had it backwards.
This time our topic was expectations, or more
precisely, letting go of all expectation. My
son was a little resistant to the idea, especially
when asked to apply it to people whose behavior
he wasn’t exactly fond. He couldn’t
see how letting go would result in anything
other than an acceleration of the behavior—basically
giving license to the individual to continue
pushing his buttons.
I tried to explain how hanging onto the expectation
of change actually locks in the objectionable
behavior, guaranteeing push-back from the person
whose behavior we don’t accept. Remembering
high school science class and Sir Issac Newton
I borrowed Newton’s Law III: To every
action there is always opposed an equal reaction:
or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each
other are always equal, and directed to contrary
parts. Translated, it means if we push someone
to change, they will push back and…our
wanting changed behavior is a subtle, sometimes
not so subtle, push.
As long as we are less than unconditional in
our acceptance, we are creating the certainty
that the behavior will not change. We see the
person as someone who does such and so, and
that is who they are, at the very least, that
is who they are for us. This may partially explain
why people can be very different depending on
who they are with at the time—different
expectations or levels of acceptance.
I wasn’t having much luck making my point.
I hadn’t found the words that could connect
the dots. Usually when this happens there is
something more for me to learn. Perhaps I didn’t
understand my point well enough to share it.
That didn’t feel accurate to me. I had
seen the truth of it too many times to deny
its reality. More likely, I wanted him to let
go of his expectations, and thus, ensured that
he couldn’t. I was doing exactly what
I wanted him to stop.
That’s when the shift took place. A window
opened into possibility ending my crusade of
logic. It suddenly became clear—the piece
I was missing. As I saw what I was creating
I had given up and the answer simply appeared;
funny how that happens. When we cling to our
desire for change, we have a picture in our
heads of what we want to happen. We become knowing.
We know what is right and what is wrong. Our
version is right; the other version is wrong.
That in and of itself is a set-up for failure,
locking us into an unending war. Take a look
at recent history; it’s sadly full of
examples.
But there is another, perhaps more important
consequence. When we hang on to our expectations,
locked into our version of how ‘it’
should be, we aren’t holding the space
for miracles. God can’t slip in and surprise
us with His version, a version always far beyond
our ability to imagine. If we can find the courage
to let go of our expectations of others, and
ourselves for that matter, we allow God’s
pure design to unfold.
real
eyes
don't
conceptual
lies
Bernard Gunther
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