Expectations and Disappointments

Life is filled with joys and sorrows, achievement and mistakes, expectations and disappointments all of which is not surprising to anyone of maturity.  How an individual handles life is an indication of character and character, where does it come from?  One can look inside a large family and find a variety of personalities which have some points in common and yet are amazingly different.

Life lessons come both from personal experience but also from learning about other people’s lives.  This learning may come from reading but also from listening to their stories.  The disadvantage of most people is twofold, they are poor listeners and few seldom pick up a book after they’ve left school. I find it both fascinating and frightfully appalling to observe people in public as they are either bobbing their heads to music that is blasting in their earplugs or they are obsessively staring at their cellphone.  Unfortunately they are either texting or they are playing games on these contraptions as very few are actually reading a book.

So when things take a turn for the worse most people are caught completely off guard and then they wonder what they should do.  As financial advisers will tell you, most people live paycheque to paycheque even though it has been recommended for decades that one should have three to six months salary in savings for eventualities.  But advertisers are more appealing that financial advisers (apparently) as people have bought into the idea of “live now, pay later” philosophy that is blasted at us in all sorts of ways.  So when people have high expectations they better be prepared for huge disappointments when things go askew yet they seldom are. 

Reading a historical novel that demonstrates humanity’s folly while at the same time living with what is popularly called “uncertainty” I have the opportunity to observe how people are handling this situation.  Some with grace, some with wisdom but many with a hand wringing that is quite surprising and stressful to observe.  I’m grateful every day that my parents gave us life lessons, that I read vociferously and that I was born with phlegm.