laughterlovelight: Today has been one of those times when I must remember that my own expectations a
laughterlovelight: Today has been one of those times when I must remember that my own expectations are not always the definition of success… Oddly, disappointment is defined by whether what happens is close or not to what we expect. We hear ourselves uttering “That was disappointing” as opposed to “That was a surprise.” Here, the inner obstacle is really our quick and endless dowry of expectations, which we create and then feel entitled to. As fast as we can think, we create pictures of what we want and where we want to be and how we want to be seen, then hold them out ahead of us as some strange form of gold we must have. Expecting life to conform to these images is a perversion of having a goal. It often prevents us from seeing what life freshly brings us. Failure, it seems, is disappointment allowed to root within one’s self-esteem. Yet after falling down enough, after having things pass through our hands repeatedly, after having so many of life’s blessings arrive from beyond the range of all our schemes and plans, it seems odd to define success or failure by whether we get what we want or by how close we land to where we aim. Quite the contrary, failure would seem to be the limitations that cap our possibilities if we get ONLY what we want and touch ONLY what we aim for. #MarkNepo #disappointment -- source link