Expectations

How is your heart navigating the liminal space between Christmas and NYE?

As you may have noticed, the holidays may bring up aaaaall the feels within us.

Perhaps you're celebrating on your own, or maybe with family/friends. Both beautiful and tender in their own ways. As Ram Dass wisely said “If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your family." 

After coming to terms with the fact that I'd be spending Xmas on my own, a Mexican friend (angel) surprised me with an unexpected invite to join her in Germany. Long story short: it ended up being one of the best Christmas of my life. 

One of 2022's main lessons for me was how much expectations lead to suffering.

I was reminded again and again that the surest way of feeling disappointed and brokenhearted is to live through the fantasies of how we wish we, others and life were. 

Although expectations tend to sneak into our daily lives, they seem to intensify on special occasions such as birthdays, holidays, or anniversaries because those days should be the best days of our lives! epic! amazing! fun! full of love and laughter! ... right?!

When we try to impose our agenda on our environment, not only will we feel frustrated when life don't follow our script, but we will miss the opportunity to fully enjoy the fresh spontaneity of the moment.

Our own "romantic" ideas of what could be often can come in the way of finding happiness in what actually is.

Spoiler alert: life won't turn out the way we want it to. the holidays aren't always the merriest time of the year. friends will let us down. we will hurt others. our partners won't always love us the way we wish they would... and life can still be spectacular. 

So what if instead of making our joy conditional on things happening the way we want them to, we choose to practice joy no matter what unfolds?

What if instead of exhausting ourselves trying to manage experiences, outcomes and other people's behaviours, we release our grip, burn our scripts and say YES to what is.

Maybe we swap expectations for curiosity. Maybe we choose to get to know people rather than demand they are a certain way for us to be happy. Maybe we relinquish control to allow ourselves to be surprised by life. Maybe we remember we can only do our best, one moment at the time.