I don't expect anything from you.

I am generally a pretty positive and upbeat person. You want to know why? I try my best to have no expectations. That doesn't mean I don’t have goals or that I don’t strive for excellence in what I do. It means that I make a conscious effort to take the world as it comes and make the best of it. Sure I have my off days, just like everyone, but I don’t let what I want define what is.

That to me is where you get in trouble. Expectation leads to entitlement. Entitlement leads to disappointment. Disappointment leads to bitterness. See how I got a little Yoda in there for you. When you don’t feel you are owed anything, when you don’t “expect better” of the world around you, you find that what you have, even if it is only a little, is pretty damned amazing.

I often have debates with my husband over people being assholes. I often say “You can’t fault people for acting to their nature.” Do you want the people around you to be good, loving people? Of course you do. Can you hold your expectations of them and your demands for their behavior against them? I don’t think so. If someone is in your life and is not the kind of person you want around, or is not worth the effort, let them go. All you do is poison yourself with your disappointment that they, “ weren't who you thought they were” when you continue to hold them to your expectations.

When I was a little boy I would always get incredibly wound up about some future event; vacation, my birthday, Christmas to name a few. I would be so full of anticipation, of expectation, that I would work myself into frenzy over all of the amazing things that I just knew were going to happen. Almost every time I was disappointed, not because the experience wasn't a good one. But because I had built up so much expectation of the event that I was devastated that it didn't live up to the fantasy I had built.

I find so much more joy in just being in the moment, without the imagined planning of what is to come. Of the conversations I’m going to have. Of the people who are going to just love me. They just may, but coming into the experience with that need, means you will leave it unfulfilled, because, honestly, your fantasy of how things will be will almost certainly be better than the reality.

My world view does not absolve me from trying to better the world. It doesn't absolve me from trying to be a good person.  In its way it makes me and only me responsible for my happiness, it makes me and only me responsible for making my world a better place. Rather than be free of obligation. I find that it makes me more obligated, not by the expectations of others around me, but by my own personal set of ethics.