Using my example, it’s time to face your vices. We come to the most important of them all
Expectations: A Harbinger of Hatred. Chapter 1
How to lower your expectations in order to start enjoying life and living again
One of the most influential concepts in a person’s life.
It’s these expectations that dictate the emotions we feel.
Whether it be joy, inspiration, pleasant surprise, or anger, pain, and disappointment.
I first started noticing this during my school and university years.
I always created a tense atmosphere before exams, preparing for the worst…
As a result, I always performed better than everyone else and felt more joy than the others. Many found it odd, knowing that with my level of preparation, it was very hard to fail. And there was some truth in that.
However, everything seems straightforward when your challenges are known in advance, like various exams, where you have time to set the right level of expectations.
What is the right level?
The first clue — expecting nothing makes it all the more delightful to ‘unexpectedly’ receive something.
But it’s not that simple, and in this interpretation, as in everything, there are many nuances we’ll try to delve into.
Part 1. The First Job
The world constantly preaches that hard work will surely bear fruit. Yet, it never answers the most important question — when?
In school or university, you always know when: at the end of a quarter, a semester, an academic year, or at the very latest, by the end of your schooling or upon completing your thesis.
There are always clear criteria for how you’re assessed at the end of any reporting period.
But when you leave this established, sandbox-like system, that clarity and determinism begin to dissolve, breeding stress and depressive uncertainty.
The rule of hard work no longer seems fair.
If you put all your eggs in a basket with no bottom — don’t be surprised when they all break.
Effort alone is not enough.
You need to be clear about the direction in which you’re exerting these efforts, otherwise, they just burn away to nothing.
And it would be very good if you realize this in the end and correct the mistake in the future.
But most continue to go to the same job for 20 years, hoping for some changes that seem always just about to happen, yet they never do.
So begins the story of how inflated expectations start to ruin our lives.
You graduate from university with honors, top of your class, and start looking for a job.
But you’re not needed by anyone. Why? Well, you know the reason.
Because what’s needed is work experience.
Instead of realizing your potential as ‘the best’, three months later you end up taking the first job you find, completely unrelated to your field of study.
You’re no longer the best, just an ordinary worker — the dirt on your boss’s shoe.
Many know the depth of this feeling of despair.
I still don’t know what’s better, if they had told us the truth in university — about what awaits us, and the university wouldn’t have gotten its tuition, as many likely would have dropped out. Damn business.
Or the fact that we did graduate, and whether we wanted to or not, gained some important life skills, especially in communication.
This is how I answer when many ask me:
“Is higher education necessary in today’s world?”
You can acquire technical skills on your own, but university gives you an additional chance to meet interesting people, kindred spirits in this world.
“Tell me who your friend is, and I’ll tell you who you are,” goes the saying. It’s never been more relevant.
Your environment shapes you, choose it wisely.
The second trap awaiting you right here:
You’re so grateful to your first employer that, no matter how poorly they treat you, you keep on putting up with it until they throw you out like a mangy dog.
But they won’t throw you out…because you’re the most loyal, the most productive employee in the company.
At least for now…for the next 20 years, until the next fool, just younger, comes along.
I won’t list all the traumas and diagnoses you can collect at this stage, which only a few can manage to overcome, sometimes with outside help, but mostly it’s about getting through it.
Part 2. Health. Stress Strikes Back.
Just when you’ve caught your breath, settled into independent life, and even begin to think that now life will surely get on track…
The stress you’ve endured will inevitably make itself known. Sooner or later.
Until you’ve had serious health problems, you think you’re immortal.
I’ve never been completely healthy; I have certain congenital issues.
But it’s one thing when what you’re already accustomed to progressively worsens, and quite another when something new emerges.
Especially when it manifests for the first time.
You can never be prepared for this. Never.
In most cases, it’s predictable, based on the lifestyle one leads.
But in life, as always, either you don’t have the right people around, or we’re too stubborn to listen and believe.
Loss is a part of human existence. Only after experiencing it do we start to appreciate things.
And unfortunately, we are wired in such a way that we only properly perceive our own losses, the losses of our immediate family. Only those that concern us. Biological egoism.
Regardless of whether we share or don’t share the viewpoint of another person.
Part 3. Treatment
The next breach in the dam of expectations occurs when you try to improve your faltering health.
You’ve seen videos where people get bionic prosthetics, organ transplants, artificial hearts printed on 3D printers…
But reality is different.
You don’t live in a medical institute where the best minds of humanity have gathered and you have all the money in the world
At best, you live in a major city in your country, where good specialists are few and far between.
At worst, you’re in a forgotten backwater, praying that your doctor, who believes in antiviral remedies, doesn’t mess up the diagnosis this time, while you’ve been waiting a year for a free operation under state insurance.
And no one will care that your diagnosis could be fatal.
You’ll wait until you either die or finally get the treatment.
In a big city, it’s better. You have a wider range of services and medical assistance.
But many forget that this world is not only filled with good people.
If a foolish doctor from the backwaters might just stop at an incorrect diagnosis, a doctor-entrepreneur from the capital, despite or sometimes because of an intentionally wrong diagnosis, will drain you of every last penny, having you sign all the papers stating that this specialist and center bear no responsibility, even in case of a fatal outcome of your treatment.
And one fine day, you might even think you’ve found salvation…
To be continued…
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