Expectations: Love, positivity and otherwise

 

I've been thinking a lot about relationships lately and that's a bad thing because, well, I'm really bad at them.

Not bad in sense of being selfish or abusive.

Rather, I tend to be as my 8th grade English teacher once said to me...."Hyper analytical."

Before you run off to Google it, that just means I think too much...about everything.

Seems nothing happens in my life without at least some measure of the consequences being considered first.  

At length...

The same can be said for a lot of  people but I tend to take it to another level.  Hence...Hyper analytical.

It's served me well for all those things where there was a "safer" option but relationships are all about risk and reward.

So let me put this out there right up front.  The Internet is a HORRIBLE place to find answers to your relationship questions.  Want to ruin a good thing?  Listen to some idiot try to tell you what you're feeling.  

"The first kiss should happen by the second date..."

"Sex should happen by the 5th date..."

"If she doesn't want to hold your hand it means she's not into you..."

Bull...

Love isn't an Amazon Prime purchase.  There are no customer reviews or 5 star rating systems.  Well, there are but they're worthless.

The heart wants what it wants but I can tell you from experience that the heart is, to be blunt, stupid.  This is why we have brains.  The problem is the two are mortal enemies.  Where the heart may be warm and accepting the brain is cold, analytical and far more subject to the influence of the sin of "idle hands."

Leave things unsaid long enough and those "idle hands" get busy.

The best relationship advice is to forget about expectations.  Especially those born from uncertainty.

If you look for answers everywhere BUT the person who actually has them you're doomed.


I've written about the dangers of relying on absolutes before and when it comes to relationships it seems they're everywhere.  Look for definitive answers to questions about love and you get 1000 opinions.  All of them framed as a golden truth but as worthless as cow patties.

OK, here's the wave thing again...

Remember we can only control our own actions, our own thoughts and our own judgement.  The more we ride the waves the more we learn that no two are ever the same.  Any expectations beyond "wet" and "movement" are unreliable.

Be open to what's happening in the relationship good or bad but keep your expectations out of it.

I can tell you from experience that the worst heartbreak comes not from what you think someone did to you but rather a personal expectation they couldn't and/or didn't want to live up to.  
  
That's the issue with expectations; they aren't reality, they're just unspoken demands.  Anything unspoken eventually leads to trouble down the line.  Besides, DEMANDS don't make for great relationships.

I have a close friend that I absolutely HATE going to restaurants with.  The reason is that he's never happy with his order.    An example comes to mind. 

My friend often orders salads.  Now it's not unusual that they just might include a tomato or two.   

Thing is, he hates tomatoes with a passion but when he orders he  never says anything to the waiter about his disdain for all things tomato.  So the salad comes with the offending red veggie (Supreme Court says it's not a fruit BTW) and spends the rest of the meal grumbling about how they should have known he didn't want tomatoes.  

 It's happened so often that now I won't go anywhere with him that doesn't require you to tell someone behind a sneeze guard exactly what you want.  

Subway restaurants come to mind...

Just like my finicky eating friend you never get what you want when you make unilateral judgments.   

Admittedly, that's hard to do at times.  

Gosh, wouldn't it be just wonderful if if all our relationships were like an 80's John Hughes film.  A couple of awkward meetings, love and/or friendship develops and gets tested just before the ultimate resolution rising to a crescendo complete with happy ending all in the space of a couple of hours.

Yeah, it don't work that way.

BUT!

It's easier if you're riding the wave instead of trying to dictate its direction.  Love the moment, breathe in the atmosphere and enjoy the ride.  

Just don't forget to keep your eyes open.

We get into the most trouble when we get lost in our own expectations and make blind assumptions.

Be you, be real and be open... 

Positive Waves - Finding the positive in everything

It's very late as I write this so forgive the meanderings of a mind still stirring after most have long since retired.

The room is dark, Gordon Lightfoot's, "Sundown" plays in the background and I'm in a good place.  

Not that all is puppies and rainbows.  I lost an Uncle this week and in the process tested whether what I preach was practiced.

There's plenty of babble about positivity out there.  Lip service from the self-help set that seem to have an answer for everything.  Ready made solutions conveniently packaged for instant gratification like a candy bar from the corner convenience store.

We know better don't we?

Life's not about easy answers, absolute truths or anything that passes for divine insight. 

These days my favorite analogy has to do with waves.  I picture a sunlit day over some tropical beach watching the waves crashing against the shore.  In the distance I see a lone figure prone on his longboard.  

He waits for the swell, paddles toward the growing curl and when the moment is right stands up and rides his wave...

Or not...

It doesn't matter, there's always another wave and another opportunity to shoot the curl.  

We can't control the waves only how we react to them.  Do we submit or harness their power.  

That's up to you...

Life is the same.  I'm not suggesting any easy answers because there aren't any.  If there were life would be pretty boring now wouldn't it.  

Of course you could always choose to stay on shore.  No risk in that, no reward either....

It's so very easy to keep a death grip on what we believe to be true even if it robs us of the gifts that life offers..  

The echoes are familiar: I'm not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough or any of a 1000 reasons to stay in that safe place.

I've often said that we're prisoners of our experience.  Some misunderstand it as an assertion of some deeply held absolute truth that I carry around like a boulder strapped to my head.

It's not.  Instead it's an acknowledgement of the enemy we have to conquer before we can truly experience what life has to offer.

My mind works in strange ways leading to sometimes strange analogies.  One that I frequently borrow, from of all places the financial industry goes like this...

"Past performance is not indicative of future results."

Good advice whilst evaluating your portfolio but even better when you're in unfamiliar territory.

Experience is an excellent teacher but the lessons never end.  

I'll put it to you this way.  When I was in school Pluto was still a planet.

Now it isn't.

So should I reject evidence contrary to what I learned in school or should I be open to something new.

My "prisoner" phrase isn't meant as an absolute but rather a warning because it's so very easy to cage ourselves in the context of the past when dealing with the present.

Most people don't want to be in prison.  It's a place that keeps you in the past paying for sins real and imagined.

 
So do we always catch that wave?  Is the ride always sweet?




Hell no but here's the trick.

If we fall off that board at least we know we've tried and chances are we'll try again.  Eventually as we open ourselves to new information we'll figure out how to ride that wave all the way to the shore.

We don't control the waves only how we respond to them.

Does that mean I'm never sad, angry or disappointed?  Of course not!  I'd be some babbling idiot if that was the case.

But just like falling off your surfboard there's something to be learned.  Even in the worst situations you can find the positives.  Maybe that flat tire gave you time to think about something you didn't have time for otherwise.  Maybe the ending of that past relationship brought into focus what you really wanted.

There's always something to be gained from our experiences.  Let them be our teachers but not our masters.  

Every hero's tale ultimately finds said hero evolving beyond their mentor.


Positivity isn't about being a happy idiot.  It's about being open to the possibilities even if it they aren't immediately obvious.

Watch the waves, float along for awhile and when you're ready stand up and harness their power.

"NO"

No,

I hear a lot of permutations of the word.

You probably do as well even if you don't notice it at the time.  In fact the word "NO" has probably saved your life.  

What do you think a glowing red stoplight is telling you?  

Simply, NO...

Because of course if we ignored it, chances are we'd probably be involved in some horrendous accident harming ourselves and others and ultimately spurring a flood of negative consequences.  All of them ultimately telling you...NO!

The word will have its due one way or the other.  I suggest the path of least resistance...

So NO can be a good thing.  A guard rail protecting you from a sheer cliff.  An intuition about maybe not taking a stroll down that dark, sketchy street.

NO gets a bad rap for being negative.  Nobody likes to be denied something. Be it a favorite morning danish or tickets to a popular performance the last thing you want to hear is that there's just NO more left.  

There are other kinds of bad NO's too.  

NO, you didn't get the job.
NO, you don't qualify for the loan.
NO, you're not going to be a rock star
NO, she doesn't love you in "that way."

They say the trick to get through this mess we call life is to keep things in perspective.  Sometimes that's hard to do and even in an age of constant communication we can end up feeling alone even though it seems like we're in a crowd.

You may have 10,000 followers on Facebook but one careless quip can make you a pariah.

NO can be a lonely place.

A friend recently told me, "After awhile hearing nothing but 'NO' can take its toll on you."

We were talking about my recent difficulties in supporting myself and while what he said was true I also knew that instead of NO being a wall, I had to keep endeavoring to treat it as little more than a low hurdle.

To be honest, the word hasn't been kind to me lately but then there's that perspective thing again.

It reminds me of that joke that Garrison Keillor (controversy aside) makes about the Lutheran philosophy of life. 

"Things could always be worse..."

Which sounds kind of self-defeating until you realize that it's an admonition to appreciate what you've got.  

I often remind myself that you're never really at the bottom until somebody's throwing dirt on your coffin.

Which, by the way, is why I'm not a fan of zombie movies or Lazarus stories.

Zombies are gross and I'm more inclined to believe that Lazarus was less resurrected than  buried alive...  

Sometimes NO can be a guide.  It can show you the way when reason otherwise fails you.  Take the example of not getting that job you were after.

Of all the possible reasons that could be responsible the only one that matters is: Were you honest with yourself when you went after it?

Was it really what you wanted or just something to continue a lifestyle you weren't that wild about to start with.

NO can be the ultimate "tough love."  It's half of the equation when people talk about what's in their "heart of hearts."  

They say, "The heart wants what it wants." and there's NO denying it NO matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise.

You know my story.  I've always tried to spend my time doing things in harmony with my passions and interests.  Sometimes that works, most of the time it doesn't but it's worth the struggle.

I want to be a writer so I write.  Nobody much cares about my work and I've received no accolades doing it aside from a few kind words from my peers.  

The point is that I continue to do it because NO is a hurdle not a wall.  I believe in what I'm doing and hope it brings some value to someone even if it's only me.

That's the point.  Take the adversity, the denials, the denouncements and use them as tools instead of letting them define you.  

Life doesn't always happen on a convenient schedule as much as we'd like it to.  Bills,commitments and mortgage payments all try to dictate what we're supposed to be.  It becomes far too easy to live according to someone else's expectations.  It knocks us out of sync.

NO wonder everyone is so miserable....

NO can be a good word.  A guidepost that forces you to choose what you're living for.  

There's a natural flow in all things.  Throwing rocks in its path only causes disorder and destruction.  

That may seem a bit Zen but it's the simplest way to express what I'm trying to tell you.

NO is just a tool, not a character assessment, not a valuation, not a condemnation.  

Just a tool....

Your past experiences can ruin your present so do something about it.

There's nothing you've ever done that wasn't influenced by something you'd already experienced.  

That may seem obvious but the longer we live the more baggage we drag along with us and it can have effects we may not always be aware of.

Every experience, good or bad, has value.  We tend to cherish the positive and bury the negative in hopes that those unpleasant memories fade to oblivion.

Thing is, we can't escape our own history.  Regardless of how hard you try all that we see or do is part of how we approach everything that comes after.

So with that preface I share with you a strange ritual that I participated in with a close friend.

My friend recently started a great job.  It's just about everything you could ever want.  Great pay, great people and a solid organizational structure that encourages individual success.

He's had it for about 6 months and every time I see him it seems his enthusiasm for the position grows.  Thing is, in the midst of all that positive energy I kept picking up on hints of some negative baggage carried over from his last job.

Understandable considering he had his last job for 16 years, the bulk of his career to this point.  

I remember the tension and frustration of those days.  He learned much of what he knows from the experience of working there.  Unfortunately, the last few years of it had burned some rather unpleasant memories into his subconscious.  It was a betrayal of sorts rooted in a misguided bureaucratic process.

For him it became something he never signed up for.  There were demands put upon him that had little to do with his primary function.  Couple that with unrealistic expectations with no support from a management team without a mission statement.

It became hell.  One that finally required drastic action to escape.  In the end he left on good terms with enough of a parachute to get him to his next job.  He was fortunate to have rolled the dice and won and when his latest job came along he won again.

But as I said, we can't escape our experiences.  With all the positives of my friend's new job there were echoes of his past causing interference.  He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and holding back much as he did in his old job.  

Something symbolic had to be done so that the subconscious hangups from his old bad experiences didn't color his new ones.

Negatives can always be turned to a positive but you have to be able to put them in their place first.  To that end I thought about how we might be able to do something that would create in his mind a clear delineation between his old job and his new one.

I had it!

A few years back he had given me a shirt with the company logo on it.  It was a token gesture of thanks for helping him out on a project we worked on together.

The shirt didn't mean much to me other than preventing nakedness.  I hadn't worn it more than twice and never felt quite right about having it since I never worked for the company.  The interesting part about it is that he never wore it and made a point of giving it to me as though he were trying to rid himself of it.

It occurred to me that since we both had some level of discomfort over this shirt that maybe it was time to bring it to a dramatic end.

So I brought it back to him but not to rejoin the rest of his wardrobe.  No, I had a far more dramatic end in store.

We were going to burn that bitch....

A week went by when my friend surprised me.  There was the shirt still rolled up in the plastic bag I had returned it in.  

We were going to do this and without a moment's hesitation on a particularly dark night we took the shirt to his back yard and set in on fire.

As we watched it burn and tried to stay out of the toxic smoke that can only come from a 50/50 polyester/cotton blend we gazed transfixed at what was meant to be a dramatic and graphic bookend to a bad memory.

It was a gesture to put the memory in its place.  My hope is that the image of that shirt ablaze supplants all those subtle little naggings that can sabotage his new job.

It's not unlike the story I was once told of the guy who bought a new pickup truck.  The story goes that a man bought a brand new pickup truck to replace one that was old and beat up.  He was getting ready to leave when a salesman came up to him and told him admiringly how beautiful it was and how he was sure the man would probably want to try to keep it that way.

On hearing this, the man turned, thought about what he said and then proceeded to pick up a huge rock and throw it in the bed of the truck causing a huge dent and of course a number of scratches in the paint.

The Salesman, horrified, couldn't believe what he just saw to which the man said, " I need this truck for work and can't afford the distraction of keeping it pretty.  Now I don't have to worry about it."

Ok, a bit extreme but the lesson is relevant to the message.  You can't let irrelevant things distract you from what you're trying to accomplish.  If it takes burning a shirt or throwing a rock at a brand new truck to get the BS out of the way then do it.

Pain and Suffering

I'm convinced there's a bit of masochist in all of us...

It's not that I have a low opinion of humanity I think it's just human nature if not biology to need a bit a suffering to validate our accomplishments.  Think about it.  Without pain we can't know pleasure.  Without a challenge, victory isn't so sweet now is it. 

That's not to say that wanton suffering is a good thing.  Suffering for no good reason is the definition of masochism.  If there's a goal to reach, however, it's perfectly reasonable to endure a bit of pain.

That's one of the reasons I hate cheaters in multiplayer games.  They add needless suffering for their own selfish ends.  It may be fun to dominate everyone else for a few hours but after awhile it just gets boring.  Unless that's your idea of fun.  In which case you'd be exhibiting some sociopathic tendencies. 

In which case, I'm keeping an eye on the kiddies when you're around...

There was a line I remember from the movie "The Matrix" and I think of it often.  Agent Smith was interrogating Morpheus and made the following commentary on humanity.

"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery"

Agent Smith's premise was good but he paints with a bit of a wide brush.  If we weren't meant to endure some pain we wouldn't have any nerve endings.  We'd just aimlessly walk around stumbling into traffic and occasionally ending up in wood chippers without a care in the world.  We wouldn't have as clear a grasp on consequences either and I'm fairly certain the human race would have been nothing more than a fossil record by now.  In Star Trek 5, Kirk said it best...

"Damn it, Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

We're programmed to value our victories more when they aren't so easy to obtain.  We've all wished at some point that we were rich or got paid to do nothing.  The reality is that most of us wouldn't be idle for long.  It's more likely you'd find something to challenge you even if you didn't have to worry about paying the bills anymore.

In the case of Bernie Madoff, his challenge was to not get caught, hence my earlier sociopath example...

Hopefully your motives would be more pure but it ultimately comes down to the same thing.  We're just  not happy unless we're striving for something.  It could be your career, a favorite project, a game or even just surviving to a ripe old age.  All of it involves a challenge and like it or not challenge and pain are synonymous terms.

Nothing has value to us unless we "pay the price."  So long as it's a fair price there's no problem just be sure it's worthwhile.  Otherwise we end up being martyrs and masochists which is just unnecessary pain.