Influences & Expectations

Posted on June 16, 2007 By OneMysticalMonkey

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the level of social conditioning that most of us in the West endure without even realizing it. There is so much of our world that revolves around an unthinking mob mentality which has been conditioned in to us. Some of this conditioning may actually be healthy on a social level -otherwise we may run the risk of personal injury, chaos and anarchy- but so much of it is just … bad. It numbs, it pacifies, it subjects our true happy, light-filled nature to all kinds of subjugation and a certain level of non-physical violence. It teaches us to look for approval from others –any other- instead of relying on ourselves. It undermines our confidence, and it encourages us to strive for the “big house, fast car” goals and it enforces the idea that security comes in conformity.

And what a messed up, mistaken, misleading bunch of badly-conceived ideas and emotions to encourage! But boy, that conditioning starts early and runs deep! It’s quite subtle most of the time, even after you realize you are a product of it and decide to change it. Despite our best efforts, still we find ourselves conditioning our children the same way we have been conditioned. It sneaks out in the expectations we put upon our children to do things according to our own physical pace instead of their less frantic gait (“Why aren’t your toys cleaned up yet?”). It comes out when we expect our children to identify and communicate their feelings the way we might instead of according to their actual ability (“Stop hitting your sibling – use your words!”) eventhough, sometimes their actual ability to communicate is by screaming or hitting their sibling!

It’s sad that our world does not allow an opportunity for our children to develop naturally – we put such demands on them so early. But who’s demands are they? Well, they are ours, but they are influenced by our upbringing, influenced by our culture, and influenced by the expectations we have. And expectations are a weird thing – they’re everywhere, all around us, part of our social conditioning, playing off of our egos and wants and demands whether it is expectations of ourselves or expectations we place upon others.

And what is an “expectation”? According to WordNet, an expectation is a “belief about (or mental picture of) the future”. It is something we want from ourselves or from somebody or something else. And what a frustrating mess things frequently become if our expectations aren’t met. But is it fair to expect things of people that they are just not capable of doing? No, it’s not. Would you expect to get ice cream from a shop that sells computers? Probably not. So how do we determine whether we, a given situation, or somebody else, is capable of meeting our expectations? We take responsibility for our expectations and we stop… we listen … we watch. We have patience and understanding and compassion and we take our own egos out of the situation and evaluate the situation for the reality of what it is, not for the ideal that we expect it to be. And as we take responsibility for our expectations, we take our egos out of the equation. By doing this, we find that our knee-jerk, conditioned responses start to cease, and we discover that our inflated, idealistic, expectations weren’t so important after all…

Namaste.

(Re)Examinations • Nudges & Ponderings

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