To Be Expected

I was sitting in the tram earlier and I suddenly started thinking about expectations. It was triggered by a story I remembered, of a man who went clubbing frequently and made it a habit to tip extraordinary amounts to the bouncers, as well as give away expensive bottles of champagne to people he hadn’t even spoken to.

As you can understand, this all made him very popular initially; but soon it was expected. The bouncers got angry if he didn’t tip well and strangers wanted to talk to him for the free booze he might give. He was still considered a little special, but it was far out of proportion to the amount of money he was spending.

When people expect something they no longer see the behaviour as special. This goes from the small to the big. For example, not long ago wars were common and people were very happy when there was a period of peace. Now, however, we are used to peace and grumble about conflicts in far away countries that take very few lives, compared to what went before. Initially we were very happy when our loved ones gave us a lot of attention, but now we expect it and barely bat an eyelid. This behaviour can be seen back in children quite quickly, as they haven’t yet mastered subtlety; children will often run to daddy when he comes back from his business trip and shout ‘did you get me anything?’; then they get upset when this isn’t the case.

It can go the other way too. Teachers will snap at children that aren’t doing anything wrong, for example, because they expect them to behave badly. Discrimination is another form of expectation. We expect the minority to act badly, therefore give them fewer chances and treat them with hostility (which in turn might lead a perfectly good person from this minority to fall into bad behaviour). This also why it is so hard to get rid of corruption in many countries; the expectation that everybody is corrupt means that those people that aren’t can’t actually get their work done.

Expectation isn’t all bad, of course. It protects us from being cheated several times by the same person or people; it means we don’t worry about such things as whether the sun will rise tomorrow; and it means we trust others to do their jobs. We expect the police officer to do his job, we expect the trains to drive on time and we expect the traffic lights not to jump to green in both directions.

The problem is just that when we don’t think about expectations we end up taking things for granted that are actually very special – the kindness of a loved one, another day in good health, a job that pays on time and pays well – I am guilty of it myself, I will immediately admit. That’s why, from here on in, I’m going to try and take more time each day to think about the expectations that I’ve got and whether they are beneficial or restrictive.

My life is special and it would be nice if I could spend more time remembering that.