Lose those expectations

So you meet someone, become infatuated, date, and allow your mind to create an exaggerated image of that person. Soon you find that he’s your soul mate. You don’t want to live without him; he means everything to you. And then he stumbles, somewhere around three months, maybe six months.

He fails to meet your expectations.

He loses soul mate status.

“You just aren’t the person I thought you were,” you say, walking out the door.

Of course he isn’t. He’s a person, not a figment of your imagination. Lighten up. Let each person be themselves.

When we’re with someone, either as a friend or as a lover, a good deal of the success or failure of the relationship can be traced to our expectations. We get angry when we expect someone to behave in a certain way and he or she doesn’t. We feel cheated, lied to, and disappointed. Here we stacked all of our chips on a certain number coming up, and when it doesn’t, we get mad.

Lose those expectations. If you enjoy another person’s company, then enjoy it cleanly and without any expectations. People are people. They will stumble; they will get back up again—or not. You cannot control them. All you can do is learn from them, love them, and enjoy their company when they’re around.

Drop the expectations. Allow people to just be themselves. Appreciate them for who they are. Let the love that you have for them grow out of that appreciation, instead of out of what you expect in what writer Natalie Goldberg calls “your monkey mind.”

God, help me remember that when I lose my expectations I just might find real love.

From the book: More Language of Letting Go

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