Life is full of expectations that are met by controlling people and/or situations. The truth however is that the only person you can control is yourself, that too with great difficulty. You have the right towards your intent, thought, actions but not towards the consequences/results of them. So you can choose your intent, thought, actions for achieving particular results and yet the desired result may not come about. Thats the nature of things, non acceptance of which is futile…
The problem lies with the fact that we make our happiness contingent upon the desired outcomes and ignore the age old wisdom of Karma Yoga – Action without expectations, possibly because we don’t know how to take action without expectations.
Expectations or goals are actually directional in nature, they are not fixed points. If you reach the goal, your goal changes, hence goals could, at best, guide you as to the direction but getting there is a factor of your own effort. If you make your joy contingent upon achieving the goal then you ignore the joy involved in the process of getting there. The journey is your life and if you don’t enjoy precious moments walking towards the goal, what makes you think that you would enjoy even after achieving your goal? and thats exactly what happens, the joy of achieving the goal is very short lived and you immediately start thinking what next? You get into the habit of stressing yourself to achieve something that would give you a joy so short lived but the habit of stressing would remain and would finally convert itself to a psychosomatic disorder.
Now ask yourself, whether you want to enjoy life – if yes, then life is in the journey and the goals are mere milestones created by you to give you a sense of progress. Don’t make your joy contingent on milestones (uncontrollable), instead make it contingent on the process of life which is more under your control…
Bodhisattva 