Continued from "Expectations -- Part 2: The Boogyman in Relationships."
Consider the idea that nothing is personal. That every word, every compliment and negative rumor is not something derived of you and you alone. Instead, most of the time things that we think, say and feel are coming from us.
The woman who adores the dress on you sees herself in it and thinks she would look pretty. The man who makes a crack at your work ethic and no-nonsense "get it down" over-achieving either resents himself for doing the same and not being able to reel it in, or is the opposite and feels threatened. Either way, why are you taking it in as personal?
I don't know much but I'm learning. I'm learning that most things are NOT personal at all. My mother left when I was fourteen. It's an old, tired, boring story to me now. She didn't do it personally to me. She did it because SHE needed to her. It's on her, not me, Yet, I spent a good portion of my life attaching to that outcome and therefore manifesting all these abandonments in my life, and giving myself reason and self-pity to draw back to it.
My distaste or major aversion to a person is usually (if I'm being honest) because something about that person resembles a darker insight about myself that I fear and detest, or worse, MY feelings of inadequacy are in the way of allowing them TO BE THEM, and not pass judgment because I have attached some value or outcome to how things should be. It's so simple, and yet so difficult to do.
I'm accused of all kinds of things, all the time. People who barely know me claim I'm too honest. I love too big. I have no filter. I am wily and unpredictable. I am cold and detached or extreme. These are all labels, no? Labels tend to be correlated only with some type of expectation or outcome of how I should be.
Guess what? I'm also scared to be honest sometimes, so I fold in on myself. I need routine and order to be calm. I am emotionally sweeping and connected to so many people and things, not at all detached. That's (one of) my biggest problem(s). I can sometimes operate in this monotone level of clarity and lack of extremes.
I can save you the suspense:
We all have the yin and yang in us. We ALL can be all ends of the spectrums in extremes and in moderations.
Labels keep us comfortable or they convince us that finding buckets and perfectly applied notions that fit a "personality" or "type" will make life easier. We know what "to expect" if someone is a banker, or a stripper, a novelist, or a scientist, or Catholic or Muslim, a soccer mom, a liberal, right? Or do we use labels to manifest the ideas we have of people and things based on how WE see things, not necessarily as they are?
They don't work though. I learned this early. I imagine that's why I'm so confusing to people. I think it's easier for people to say I'm "fake" or "lost" than to acknowledge that within themselves is the exact same capacity to be all ends of things. We are taught and learn how to stick with one thing or another. In school "are you creative or good at math" are you "assertive or passive?" "Are you a leader or a follower?" "A girly-girl or tom-boy?"
I remember being five years old and thinking people were all dumb. I know, it's horrible even as I write it. It's horrible to say it, but as a child I remember the moment, the dress I wore and the feeling I had when I saw all the hypocrisy as if the universe paused and shone a spot light on the stage of my life right there.
I saw my own parents struggling to be in the mold or boxes they, themselves had created. I distinctly remember sitting in the family room, in a white chair with bright yellow cushions.
I remember looking at my mother distant and seemingly wistful for another life pick up the phone and put on an immediately cheerful tone with someone who had called.
In that instant, my father walked through the garage door. He did this silly Flintstone's call to my sister and I whenever he came home, and with his leather mahogany colored briefcase with gold notches in one hand he would raise the other and scream "Yabba Dabba Dooooooooooo" and we would run to him.
That day, he didn't. He was stressed or somehow not happy. He kicked the door closed behind him with one leg. I looked at him, quizzically, waiting for the Flintstones. Nothing. And that was fine by me. I'd rather not we all pretend.
Then, he heard my sister running down the stairs yelling "Dadddddd-y????" and it registered.
He clicked into mode and put on the show... I saw through it. I didn't participate because I had seen his face and his eyes that spoke of a different mood and something heavy on his mind.
YES, it is commendable to put your kids first, and to keep with traditions. I also think it's perfectly healthy to acknowledge when your mood changes, because if not, the expectations remains for every that all things stay the same no matter what. They do not. They will not.
A simple, seemingly non-eventful moment explained to me then that it is impossible to incapsulate everything and everyone into expectations. They will disappoint (expectations, and people) so like that child in me, I have recently decided to detach from expected outcomes and hope for things.
Hope and love courageously, instead with pure belief (not expectations) in the possibility of whatever it is that may come next, and more importantly, that whatever that ends up being, is exactly what I need at that moment.
Here's to holding hope, not expectations!
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