LIFE
Expectation and hope are they the same?
I’ve been told that don’t expect anything or not to have any expectations with anything, I said fine but then I come across this other thing called hope and people said hope is good, I got confused.
Aren’t they kinda the same or was there some misunderstanding with me?
So I looked it up on the internet and this is what I found.
According to Wikipedia
Expectations — In the case of uncertainty, expectation is an event that is considered the most likely to happen. An expectation, which is a belief that is centered on the future, may or may not be realistic.
Hope — Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large.
Wait what? So Expectations can either be positive or negative and Hope is just positive?
Positive or negative, we humans long for it, it comes from us, we are not taught about it at least not directly but indirectly.
What I’m trying to say is that we have hope or expectations for something because it’s missing in the first place and we think if we just have that we will be happy.
We are tied to this idea, this conditional happiness state or syndrome, where we say “I’ll be happy when or if or how …” where our happiness is tied to a condition and this gives us a want or a desire to be filled and this gives rise to expectations or hope.
When we hope for something or expect something to happen usually positive we get excited and happy for a while, there’s this light that makes us feel better but when things don’t go as expected or hoped we are deeply hurt and not happy about it, we lose faith in things, lose faith in ourselves.
Don’t get confused with goals, it’s good to have goals and set targets.
Here’s the thing with expectations or hope wherever there is hope, despair follows close behind.
If you take a deeper look at it, the root cause for all of this is that we don’t live in the present, we always imagine our future and how it would be if we just had something or if something happened, this gives rise to hope.
See where I’m going with this, Living in the future gives rise to things that are missing, and that gives rise to hope and all this is tied to happiness.
I hope this makes sense.
How do we get out of this cycle?
Well, it’s not easy for one but on the bright side, it’s super simple.
We have to learn to unlearn, super simple right?
Well, how do you unlearn something? It’s again super simple the same way we learn anything by practicing it.
We have to learn to live in the present, learn to not have any expectations, expectation kills you, it hurts and anxiety starts kicking in and you start overthinking and you lose faith in yourself and you feel shitty about yourself.
And isn’t it more exciting to not have any expectations? I mean it’s like someone gives you a present and you don’t know what’s in it when you open it, it can either be good or bad but either way you didn’t expect to get the present in the first place. So you’re happy or just fine with it.
We have to practice to live in present, practice to not have any expectations. It’s not easy tho.
It gets easier…Every day it gets a little easier…But you gotta do it every day — that’s the hard part. But it does get easier.
