For someone who has always dreamt of a knight in shining armour to come riding on a white stallion and taking her away into the ‘happily ever after time’ not much can be done to heal a heart break when the knight comes galloping on a stallion and just as she throws her arms open being sure of being lifted like a maple leaf by the summer breeze, he passes in front of her dreamy eyes over to the greener pastures while the stallion kicks dirt on her face. And like all heroines in the perfect love stories she believes in the power of true love and waits for him to return thinking he had a problem gauging the distance, or maybe the momentum wasn’t enough to carry her along, or maybe he had an alignment problem, and a million reasons women are capable of coming up with to complicate a simple explanation. Moreover, stallions do not have a reverse gear, and so it might take him a bit longer – the turnaround time is more…literally speaking!
What’s laid out here is my theory of expectations hypothesized by what life has offered me and more importantly what it has not offered me so far. The more you expect the greater are your chances of getting disappointed. Let’s say you are told by this friend of yours about this restaurant where they serve a scrumptious meal. Now, while the expectations would largely depend on the limits of your imagination, the ground reality would be what it is at the end of the day – ground reality! As much as we would want our expectations to converge with reality, facts and reality are stranger than fiction. People don’t turn out the way you thought they would, you feel betrayed and used like a tissue paper that’s popped into the dustbin the moment someone has wiped his face. You feel you have taken a wrong turn on your career path, to reach a point of no return. You had wanted to be at the other end of the pole, in some other city, on some other job, with someone else, looking different, living a different lifestyle, seeking answers to more important questions in life while you are reading this. Belied expectations and the best laid plans going waste, is something that all have the misfortune of experiencing. Why is it that some people seem happier than others? Did they get the larger share of the pie? Did they never fall prey to unmet expectations? Has WYSIWYG been truer in their case than that of others be it with people, career or even movies?
I believe everyone has a downfall of expectations. Everyone falls prey to it. But only a few get up and pretend as if nothing happened. Some take time to get back on their feet, others are quick and agile. That is what makes all the difference and if you were to ask me of the last time my expectations went for a toss I would say – here. This piece is nowhere to close to what I wanted it to be like. The least I expected it to be was a decent read for those who have been checking this space for updates and a compilation of thoughts that would a little sense to yours truly if not to those who would have the misfortune of reading this piece purely out of expectations of something worth reading.