Every person wishes to be acknowledged and felt important in any situation of life.
The reason why that happens to be the case with most is not because it’s a choice but it’s a mandate for being a human being. A person can keep helping others but the moment his help is not acknowledged or felt important, he loses interest in that specific task.
Most of the times, it so happens that people genuinely are interested in doing something but seldom get the encouragement to do it. When they do do it, sometimes people don’t acknowledge them for that.
Once a person feels less important or not important at all, the entire purpose of doing that task feels very vague and not justifiable anymore. He starts to lose interest in that task altogether. He starts to fear that he would never be appreciated enough no matter what happens.
How many times have you been in a situation where you push your own limits because someone expects highly of you or makes you feel important? And how many times have you stagnated or lost interest because the other person has lost that ‘quality’ touch they used to have previously?
Here comes another negative thing…. expectations! The thing that makes you feel good for being a ‘smart’ thinker if it works or a horribly stupid person if it fails! The expectation a human being has in this situation is the want to be acknowledged and the feeling of being important.
And as always, expectations lead to disappointments most of the times unless you are the one who is in charge of the outcome! How many times have you been in a very cheerful mood thinking of something to happen only to feel stupid and disgusted that it didn’t work out? How many times this had led you to begin comparing yourself with your peers or other people who are important to the person whom you consider as important?
This brings us to the only exception to this rule.
The task a person does on their own for their own happiness.
This happens to be the only thing that gives a human being satisfaction because when the outcome depends on himself and he’s doing it for himself, he never gets disappointed!
How nice it would be if we could treat the expectations we have from others the same way as we treat our own, including acknowledgements and importance?
Easy to say but very hard to follow, right? Well, that’s just life. You keep expectations from people who matter the most to you but you treat those expectations as the highest priority thing in the world! When it doesn’t work out, your world feels like it just shattered and affects everything you do later till sometime passes and you take your mind off it.
It also so happens that if we do treat them the same way as we treat our own, we start having lesser expectations and when that continues, we finally lose interest from the people who matter. How does this affect us? Simple, even if they do something good, if you lose that ‘quality’ touch, they start losing their importance and anything they do doesn’t make any big difference.
This translates to them being unhappy when you don’t acknowledge their efforts! This is a cycle now and the negativity consumes both you and the other person till the relationship you share ends on a horrible note!
How do we get out of this? That’s a question I always keep pondering… one simple way is to just end the relationship horribly or not take that relationship you share seriously but alas! It’s not that easy. The other person means a lot to you and you never know; you might mean a lot to them as well…so who’s the culprit?
Well, to be honest, no one really is at fault. As human beings we are just like that. One way we can change this is by not getting affected by expectations but that’s a change only the person with the best mental strength can try to achieve. The other way, which takes some practice but helps a lot in the long run is not to take failures of expectations to heart.
Who am I kidding, it does hurt a lot at first, but as we mature, we begin to realize that we are the ones to blame for keeping very high expectations of the other person. Once we stop taking things very deeply and let it go with a sigh and a deep breath, we will begin to see the positive effects of it. It still is tough trying to stop having expectations when something suddenly changes but once we understand that it’s part of life and we need to move on, it becomes a little easier. 🙂
Keeping expectations is not a bad thing but not letting them affect you in case they fail, is something that comes only with maturity and wisdom. I am not the wisest but I have come a long way so far in that regards and I still have a long way to go.
How wise are you?
The song for this post… as usual, after a very long time is this fav of mine. Hope you like it. 🙂