Hopes, Expectations,
and Fantasies
“Don’t get your hopes up.”I’ve heard it, I’ve said it; more
than twice. But, really, is this what we
want to do, to invite others to do, live with low hope levels? Well, I guess it lessens the force of the
inevitable blows of disappointment that are intrinsic to human experience. Even Mick Jagger and Keith Richards figured
out that “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and they are b’jillionaires,
right? I, for one, do not care to live
with carefully stunted Banzai-treeish hopes.
Yet I hate disappointment as much as anyone else. Maybe what we have here is a semantic
problem, you know, the wrong word for the job.
What if what we really need to learn to manage and contain are not our
hopes, but our expectations.
We are not always aware of our expectations, but we have
them nonetheless. Have you ever had the
experience of really getting jazzed up about some special event like a vacation
only to have the reality prove to be a big letdown? Conversely, have you ever attended an event
with very low desire only to be taken by surprise by a really good time? This happens because of the expectation gap
between what we anticipate and what we get.
We have all experienced it, right?
Expectations differ from hopes in that they are less pliable
and easily solidify into demands. When hopes
are unmet we experience disappointment, sadness, maybe depression. When expectations or demands are unmet it is
more like the shattering of glass, often scattering shards of anger in every direction. If those shards pierce our soul and are left
untreated they can fester and solidify into infected wounds of resentment and disillusion. Such wounds are toxic to our spirits. And they are nearly always toxic to our relationships.
Let me clarify here that all expectations are not wrong;
indeed some are very appropriate and necessary.
If you have an agreement that your kids are to rinse their dishes and
put them in the dishwasher after using them then you should expect them to comply! If they fail to meet this expectation they
should be appropriately penalized—like,
no more food for you (juuuust kidding).
But some expectations—especially the ones that are unspoken or are
outside of our own awareness—blur into what we sometimes refer to in psychology
as fantasy. Okay, expect your kids to take care of their
dishes as asked. Make them comply. That is reasonable. If, however, you expect them to love doing so
with a joyful attitude, inquiring what else they might do to ease your heavy
load…get real. That is your fantasy.
My mother had a rich fantasy life in that way, especially at
Christmas. Her internal picture of what
Christmas should look like relationally, emotionally, and spiritually was the
stuff Christmas movies of the day were made of.
She went to great lengths to create her fantasy in a full color
dreamscape. In the weeks leading up to
the big day we—her real-life dysfunctional family—usually messed the picture up
somehow and mom would end up flying into a fit of hysterical disappointment and
anger. She spewed. My dad, my brother and I each donned our Yule
tide crash helmets and hunkered down until it was over. It was ugly and created for me and my brother
a kind of love/hate relationship with holidays.
Mom never really got over this tendency toward idealizing
things and people only to be dropped hard, kicking and screaming, onto the floor
of reality. I remember one year just
after Christmas as adults when my brother and I accompanied our mother to an
appointment she had with her attorney. When
she got us into the waiting room where she knew we would have to “play nice” she
shredded us because our family Christmas celebration was not spiritual enough;
we didn’t sing, we didn’t pray, we didn’t read the Christmas story. It was ALL wrong! It—we—did not match her expectation and she
just could not let it go. Dang, we had
forgotten to wear our Yule tide crash helmets!
Christmas, in its deeper meaning of redemption, is all about
hope. Good stuff. In families and in our own little heads,
though, it is also laced with oft unrealistic expectations. Some of those expectations have been cleverly
planted by billions of dollars spent in advertising campaigns and many come
from our past experiences. The problem
is that real life seldom lives up to the screenplay in our heads. You know, the one where the loving
family—immediate and extended—embrace by the fireplace singing Christmas
carols, drinking hot chocolate and exchanging diamonds and iPads while puffy
snowflakes gently fall outside the picture window that frames the most dazzling
Christmas tree ever; that screenplay?
Real life is just so much messier than that. But it is perhaps richer than that, too.
Perhaps you are even now identifying some of the holiday
expectations or fantasies that have left you let down year after year. What if we were to soften some of those crisp
expectations that set us up for disappointment?
Let’s go ahead and hope…for joy and peace in the holiday, for improved
family relationships. But let’s not
neglect look for it in small and sometimes private and personal ways, in
unexpected places, from unexpected sources.
Let’s look for it in giving, too.
I believe that these kinds of small blessings are often true Christmas presents
for us even in the midst of trying circumstances and loss.
Copyright 2012 John D. Deyo, M.A., LMFT
