Non-expecting

(third of the four-part series)


Second Principle
I read on a psychology textbook a quote by Jonathan Swift, author of the famous Gulliver's Travel. It says "Blessed he who does not expect anything, for he shall never be disappointed." This Beatitude-like phrase has been a personal reminder for the tricky meaning of expectations. Since then I have associated the word "expect" with the word "disappointed," which is quite true in many of my experiences. When I expected things and badly cling to an idea that I will get something I want, then I just found myself like counting sheep in a dream. I had been a hopeless kid romanticizing my life with daydreams of improbable things I had always wished for.

It was equally difficult for me to choose the life I want. In a series of my 3-year old journals, I read my words ranting on those pages with sharp disappointments, filled with contempt and curses, as well as my clueless speculations on my life ahead. That was the year when I decided not to pursue anything related to my former profession, although I had an undeniable need to make money out of any career. My relatives had been expecting me to practice what I finished, but I was still weary on the idea. People who learned that I was a licensed professional couldn't help but be rueful about my decision not to move abroad and seek a promising future. I preferred to stay in the country while most of my colleagues went abroad. I also resigned after six months, at the time when I was rewarded a regular job in a call center company. Almost all of my decisions were radically renegade against the status quo. While the world is expecting each of us to do these accepted norms, I have chosen to rebel by defining them irrational. Still, I wasn't able to escape the relentless grip of the society's expectations.

Little did I know that those expectations didn't come from outside. They were my ludicrous attachments towards the life patterns I often see in this matrix and use them to unconsciously mold my own.

Expectations are often confused with another related word, hope. Yet the word hope is something more Loving, freeing, and unconditional. On the other hand, expectation is far more different, since it is based on conditions dictated by our past encounters and social milieu. As a child, I am expected to behave well, so my parents won't get angry. As a student, I am expected to have high grades and do well in school. As a native, I am expected to follow cultural customs. As a professional, I am expected to unquestioningly accept the rules and regulations. As a well-adjusted person, I am expected to please people so I can avoid any dissonance with them. As a person of this era, I am expected to respond to the social trends and act accordingly. More often than not, expectations are solidified, accepted worldviews that have been governing our lives. And we blind faithfully accept them as truths.

Our society has been expecting us to behave well. That means, we must do the things that we often do not want to do but we are submissively doing, let alone reluctantly. We are also expected to have the same things others have, so we can feel much more well-defined than the rest. Amid these dimensions, we create our own tracks to rat race with each other. We compete base on what we have materially and intellectually assimilated. But there is something lacking, and it has strongly racked anybody's mind.

Detachment is practiced as a contemplation of Non-expecting. Non-expecting is an expanded perspective of one's capacity and possibility. It is a consecration of one's own unlimited potentials that cannot be limited in the narrow boxes of conventions. If Non-judging is about stopping conclusions and comparisons, Non-expecting is about disarming external illusions of achieving a certain end. Any goals or outcomes are impressions we thought are achievable by doing and having something. These impressions will ultimately disenchant us.

Practically, Non-expecting has a lot to do with how we respond in context. We don't expect ourselves according to how people or situations label us. We are beyond any labels. If we can't belong to a certain circle, it's just fine. If we can't please others, that's OK. If we can't side any causes, no problem. We arrive in this world as infants empowered with innocence, and we are not expected to do or to have. Yet we are fully accepted as pristine creatures of Love. And that's the job we need more to be this time.

On the personal level, we cease to expect good and bad things to happen, for there is no good or bad truths opposing each other. Everything is a continuum of realities, happening as they are, and the way we interpret them as good or bad would only make our lives miserable. Non-expecting also means more than liking and disliking; We stop expecting things to stay if we favor them or to fight off if we disfavor them. We embrace any circumstances that will soon to vanish, yet trusting that there is a purpose waiting to unfold. We need not expect to accomplish goals, when we come to realize that goals are nonexistent in the realm of Love. As often said, our journey itself is our destination. There is no outcome but the process we become.

Non-expecting can refine us a great deal in practicing the art of detachment. Freedom from externals and illusions inevitably detaches us from enslaving disappointments caused by our untamed thoughts and emotions. Our detachment lets our true Loving nature become what it must be.

(to be concluded)