In this installment of Talking Circle, we asked our Facebook fans, "What does expectation mean to you?  Here's what they had to say:


T-R-O-U-B-L-E

- Kathryn Rosquette

 
For me, expectation is a positive confirmation, or a closure for something I've been waiting for and already knew the result of.  

 

- Kathy Lesnick-Grabowski

 

Expectation means trust on our own inner thoughts, which will help us to trust/expect anything from outside the world.  I think so.   

 

- DrSmita Datey

 
When you think things are going to happen a certain way.  When you want things to go a certain way.  When you think someone is going to do something a certain way.  Anything you think will happen in a certain way.

- Carolyn Duke Anderson

I don't recall what I was stressed about that day back in 1993 when I pulled the car out of the drive and my son--seven at the time--said from the backseat, "You know what's the difference between you and me, Mom?  You always expect the worst to happen, and I always expect the best."

It was one of those moments that stops you in your tracks and makes you take a hard look at yourself.  And when I did, I saw just how right he was about me.  I was one of those people who was always waiting for the next shoe to drop.  Always expecting someone to not care, to hurt me, to leave me. And I was continuously expecting to go broke, to make the wrong choice, to lose--too afraid to expect the best for fear that the worst would happen and I'd be left disappointed and feeling like a fool for believing anything good could happen to me.

Expecting the worst is an outlook common for anyone who grew up surrounded by naysayers, or in an unsupportive or abusive home.  I remember being little and waking up many mornings to the hope that this day might be different.  Maybe I wouldn't get beaten. Maybe I wouldn't be shamed.  And if those painful things didn't happen by noon, I'd find myself adding to that expectation, hoping that I might be the recipient of a kind deed that would tell me my parents did love me and were proud of me.  But by nightfall those hopes would always lay crushed, and I was left with self-loathing because I'd been stupid enough to believe anything could ever change.  Like most who grow up experiencing chronic disappointment, by the time I was a teen I had built a shield of cynicism around me that blocked all hope.  I left before others could leave me.  I didn't reach for anything I wanted. I rejected anyone and everything that made me feel even a pang of hopeful anticipation. I dug my heels in, bracing myself for life's next blow.  I was proud of myself for not being one of those suckers who fell prey to pipe dreams. 

I might have kept this mindset forever, had my son not deflected it and forced me to look at the belief system I'd based my reality on. And once I did, I decided I'd change my way of thinking.

As most often happens when we try to change, we don't go from one polar end straight to the middle ground. The pendulum swings and we move far to the other side, almost as if to get a safe distance from where we were so we won't get sucked back there.  So I went from having perpetual negative expectations, to allowing myself to only think of the best outcomes--believing, even, that I could control every outcome simply by controlling my thoughts.

It was my new, positive attitude that allowed me to make my writing dream come true. I see that now. But what I also see is that the lofty expectations I attached to that dream only led to more suffering. When I sold my first book, I had told myself I'd never worry about money again. I'd have choices then.  I'd be happy and never doubt myself or life again. And after my dream came true and the blush of joy and surprise waned a bit and I faced my next challenge, my next disappointment, I was shocked and disillusioned.  How could this be? My dream came true! This wasn't supposed to happen! I was crushed to think that I'd come full-circle, only to find myself right back to where I'd started--only feeling more foolish this time around.

I suppose I could have stayed in that old, familiar place forever, but I didn't.  Instead, I looked at my beliefs all over again, and observed the expectations of others so that I might learn.

Today, I still grapple with expectations; I suspect we all do.  And while I haven't found that exact middle point, the pendulum's sway has slowed and swings closer to the center now.  And from this perspective, I can see my relationship with expectations with a bit more clarity.  I understand now that we anticipate outcomes with every choice we make, and that it's our choice whether we fashion our expectations out of positive hopes or out of negative fears.  I may be a storyteller by profession, but slowly I'm learning to watch what stories I concoct about myself, others, and the future.  When I catch myself making up sad or scary scenarios at the beginning of a challenge, I stop and remind myself that it's only a story, every bit as much fiction as the stories I write.  And when I start feeding my expectations with one grand scene after another and daydreaming of how perfect everything is going to be when this or that happens, I stop myself, too, and remind myself to save my imagination for my novels.

Ever so slowly I'm learning that while we may be the masters of our ships, we don't control the seas.  Most hopefully, down river I'll learn to live without so many expectations.  To float peacefully on life's waters, paddling when I want to reach a shore.  To expect neither a storm to drown me, nor a raft to save me.  To be content to be a drifter on this wondrous, mysterious sea.   That's what I'm expecting, anyway.

Sandra Kring's debut novel, Carry Me Home, was a Book Sense Notable Pick and a 2005 Midwest Booksellers Choice Award nominee. The Book of Bright Ideas was Target's Bookmarked pick for Summer 2006. Thank You for All Things was All You magazine's first book club selection. Her latest book, How High the Moon, was a Midwest Booksellers Association's Connections Pick, and a Target Breakout Book. Sandra has just sold a sequel to The Book of Bright Ideas. She lives in Wisconsin.  http://www.sandrakring.com
 

Our town (40 square miles, a little over 500 households, about 1500 people total) had a shooting murder this past Saturday night. A kid (well, he was 28, but I am going to continue to say kid) killed his father in an argument. With, I believe, a .22. The father (whom I knew by sight only) was a retired Sheriff's deputy, and the police are being very close with the details. The local scuttlebutt, however, is drugs. I'd guess maybe meth, since we have a meth problem here. The kid, whose name is Michael, was arrested from home. I believe he was sitting at the kitchen table when the police arrived. (Have I invented this detail-that it was the kitchen table? Possibly. I don't want to look it up). 

Michael lived with his parents. His mother called 911 to say her son had shot her husband. 

Michael has a six-year-old boy, who slept through the shooting. I cannot imagine how his world changed in the course of one night. In the course of one second, really.

I drive by their house every day on my way to work. I have considered taking an alternate route, but I've resisted it, because that seems crazy. That's the way I go to work. Still, I'm haunted by this in a way that isn't at all good. Of course I have the political reaction, which some people consider opportunist, but I totally don't see how you can watch a tragedy unfold and not think of ways it could have been prevented. So, to that end: I hate guns. Hate them. I'm not for taking away freedoms as a rule, but your freedom to hold something whose sole purpose is the destruction of life? I'm over it. (Probably one of you will send a very well reasoned response in defense of the Second Amendment, and I will thank you later, but for now I just cannot entertain it.)

I am so sad for this family, and that six year old, and Michael and his mother. I'm sad every time my baby laughs or eats or stands up on wobbly legs or holds his foot in the air for me to kiss. I'm sad every time my two year old asks me to stay in bed with him for three more minutes at night. As trite as this is, I think it's still important to remember that Michael was once a baby who laughed at his father's silly faces and told him he loved him, I'm sure, before whatever sadness overtook him in his life. I don't think he is a monster, although he committed a monstrous act. I don't absolve him, by the way. I don't absolve him from the reality his mother and siblings and child face as they bury his father this afternoon. But that doesn't mean I don't have compassion for him. For all of them. And I'm kind of dying from it. 

This is, quite literally, my worst nightmare as a mother. I used to think the worst possible scenario was your child dying before you. I don't think, anymore, that it is. Everyone dies, as much as it sucks. If your child dies before you I'm certain the pain is unrelenting-but the truth is nevertheless your child was always going to die. But to know your child has to live with murder for the rest of his life, to know he has to look his own baby in the eye having done that, to know he's going off to prison. 

This isn't even my tragedy. Except it's everyone's tragedy. And so are nuclear reactors and the governments and Libya and Yemen and the fucking state of Detroit. Not to get all churchy, but is this is the best we can do for each other?

The family has a little Buddha in their lawn.

The only salve, really, has been knowing that the past is also true, and that with time, Michael's mother will still have all her tiny sweet moments with him in addition to these awful moments that have come and are still coming. And the hope that nothing like this is in the cards for my kids. And the knowledge that, whatever is in store from them, they also have whatever happens now.

Constantina, 33, upstate NY, is a wife, mother, Capricorn, essayist, rural hipster/marooned urbanite, knitter, aesthete, and drinker of IPAs. She blogs at http://www.theconstantc.posterous.com, where the subjects are wide-ranging and the language is colorful.

When I read that expectation was to be the word for this month's Inlightenment, I was rather surprised.  Expectations are an enemy of mine.  Expectations are something that I feel I must overcome if I am to have any chance of bringing any love, beauty, or compassion into this world.  To me, expectation is a word that belongs alongside words such as success or failure: words that conjure up images for me of either what is going to happen in the future, or what I want to achieve or avoid in the future.  These words all throw me into my thoughts of the future, and if I get attached to those thoughts and believe them to be mine, I lose connection with the sacred within.

I recently spent a few months living with a Dzogchen master in a monastery in Northern India and was truly blessed to have him take me on as one of his students, and teach me about the Nature of Mind.  Under his guidance, I came to see how my mind works, and how there is a beautiful, peaceful, empty space from which everything arises.  My thoughts rise and fall out of this space, and the energies of love and joy flow endlessly from it.  While connected to this sacred space within, anything I say and do is infused with love and beauty.

Once I discovered how my mind functioned, I made it my "job" in life to learn how to remain connected to that space at all times and in all situations.  I feel that it will only be then that will I be able to bring a little love and compassion into the world.  That space is my natural state of being, so it is not about my learning how to connect to it; it is about my learning how to free myself of everything that disconnects me from it.  That is where expectations come in.

Expectations take me out of that silent, loving, divine space within.  They throw me out into my thoughts of the future, and I am lost.  I am soon off trying to either control the world around me in order to prevent an expected outcome, or I am getting angry or sad about not getting a desired outcome and am blaming the world or another person for being unfair to me.  I am no longer bringing love to the world.  I am bringing violence and suffering to the world.

One of my main challenges in life is to learn how to act in the world without having any expectations for the outcome of my actions.  When I am able to act solely for the joy of acting, for the love that I can bring into the world and for the compassion that I can show to others then, my "job" will be over.  At that point, I will be able to exist in the world while remaining connected to the sacred within. 

I am feeling strongly drawn to play a part in the transition that I feel is taking place on the planet today--the transition out of our fear-based level of consciousness to one in which we live our lives while remaining connected to the source within. In order for me to be able play a part in that transition, I cannot just drift off into a quiet space to live out my days.  I need to learn how to act in the world while remaining connected to the source within.  It is not easy for me, and I fall from grace often.  However, I am slowly learning to let go of all of my expectations, and to let go of all effort to attain any desired goal or outcome.

Life is simple for me.  I have one job, and a big part of that job is to eliminate expectations from my life. Expectations are my enemies and I will continue hunting every one of them down until I have killed them all. 

Bruce Taylor, 48, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is currently focused on writing about the individual journey of awakening, and about a universal vision for a new world that will emerge if humanity is able to make an evolutionary leap in consciousness, and transition out of its current fear based paradigms into love and harmony based paradigms.  He is also offering his services as a spiritual guide to those that are drawn to him. As a spiritual guide, Bruce connects to his inner self and then guides others either in finding and healing the source of a dis-ease, or in connecting to their own inner guide to receive answers to their own deeper questions. Feel free to contact Bruce anytime for a spiritual guidance session or simply for a chat.  [email protected]  

For one year I dieted on debt

I fed my soul silk shirts and scarves

Financial scars by my credit cards

Never had a regard to a bill of pleasures

Or trigger off my fanatic will so

I snacked on Brady Street boutiques

Picked at runway

Spoon fed me some

Thrifted vintage

Never weak or starved

Vogue, Vogue, Vogue, vaguely carved

A menu with today's specials but with no venue

I hungered for those preview snap shot

Appetizers

Thought I was wiser that my interest due

My posture my body at eighteen shrinking

My skeleton spends the trends and fads

Draped with lies there was lies that moistened

My lips like fresh dew

I feasted on entrees outlet malls

I waddled with my left-overs to my

One bedroom one person place

With no bare crevices no bare space no bare place

To breathe with my bare walled chest

My arms thin as my closet pole

And my appetite was grazing a grave

I could not cease I could not challenge

I only charged filling an ego's rabbit hole

And it was the world I was letting go.

Terceira A.Molnar, 24, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, USA, is presently earning her BA in Writing and English Literature at Lakeland College.  Her work has appeared in University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's undergraduate literary and arts magazine, Furrow. 

For centuries, the Balinese have offered up daily prayers for the entire life cycle of food, from the planting of the seed to the harvest, and from the preparation of the ingredients to the finished dish. The Maya have created each celebratory meal with the "holy trinity" of Mayan cuisine--maize, frijoles, and squash--each of which holds deep spiritual significance. The Keralites have focused their culinary energies on meeting the deeply personal physical, mental, and spiritual needs of those for whom they cook.    

What does the way in which we in the US raise, purchase, prepare, and eat our foods say about us? What does it say about our concern for environmental sustainability?  How does it speak to the way in which we regard our bodies, our communities, and the universe at large?

In engaging and thought-provoking sessions including group exercises and a full-immersion cooking class, we will explore the sacred culinary traditions of the past, and how we can call on these teachings to better nourish our minds, bodies, spirits, and planet today.  Included among the topics:     

There are two upcoming opportunities to experience Eating with Reverence: Food for the Soul: 

Institute of Noetic Sciences

Petaluma, California, USA

July 8 - 10, 2011

Three-Day Conscious Living Workshop

National Wellness Conference

Stevens Point, Wisconsin, USA

July 17, 2011

One-Day Pre-Conference Intensive

To learn more, contact Shannon at [email protected].