Expectation is a human thing. But it is an illusion we place on ourselves and others. We expect things of others and we expect things of ourselves but they both come down to validating some concept of your current self.
People expect things of others in order to validate some concept of themselves. For example, parents expect good grades from their children to validate a concept of themselves as good parents, and lovers expect doting and kindness from their partners to validate that they themselves as worthy of love.
Each human constructs expectations of other humans to validate what they want to think about themselves. But there is no self and you cannot control other people so there is a lot of stress in expecting things of others.
We also construct expectations of ourselves to validate the notion of self that we are currently defending. Commitment to this constructed self and future makes us stop at nothing to fulfill these expectations. We hope that these mock tests and trials will prove out our constructed and fragile notions of self and future. So the whole cycle is contrived. Self and future -> expectations as a test to validate that self and future -> stress to fulfill expectations -> success or failure -> revised self and future.
Instead of contriving expectations to test the validity of our own world concept, what if we had no expectations and instead revised our world concept based on what comes in the moment without extrapolating into the future. Humans are pattern obsessed creatures, however. We expect patterns to continue. So asking anyone to stop expecting completely is unrealistic.
But maybe we can vastly reduce our levels of expectation as well as our willingness to bend to the expectations of others. Most importantly, maybe we can stop using expectations to validate our current selves by recognizing and really internalizing that there is no self and all selves are invalid and maybe, just maybe, we can let all of this go and free our time and attention for something better.
