Me, Myself & My Endless Expectations !

We are arguably at the most advanced and comfortable phase of the human existence. Never in the history of mankind, had such a comfortable and wonderful life. We are using gadgets, gizmos, and tools which only kings and queens could imagine in not so distant past. We are using cars, mobiles, TVs, refrigerators etc. Barring may be last 100-200 years, none of our ancestors had such a comfortable and cushy life with all the civic, medical and other amenities. But very surprisingly, we are not the happiest of the lot in our history. We are actually unhappy, depressed and dejected even after having all of these worldly comforts.

We are most unhappy because of one very simple reason. We are in a perpetual state of unhappiness because our expectations are exceeding our experiences. There is a gap between what we are expecting and what we are actually experiencing. Our expectations are primarily based on our imagination, our constant comparison with those around us and based on our past experiences.

All the decisions we are making are based on our imagination of how things will be beautiful, how people we choose will be nicer to us and how places we visit will be beautiful. We make these decisions based on our perception of how these things or people or experiences will make us happy. Once we make these decisions and come face to face with the things we bought, or people we decided to befriend or places we decide to visit for enjoyment, our imagination meets the reality. We immediately feel the unhappiness because of the gap between the reality and what we had expected to experience. Continuous progress in the field of technology and simultaneous deterioration of our interpersonal, familial and social interactions is widening the gap between our expectations based imagination and our actual experience. There is nothing wrong with the reality. We are making steady progress in making our reality better day by day. The issue is our imagination based expectation from the reality is not in line with the progress we are making in improving the reality. To give you an example, due to technological advances made, we have information about almost everything available at the touch of a button. Let us say we are planning a holiday at the certain beautiful location. We will go through online reviews and relevant details about places to visit and things to do etc. Now internet being under the huge influence of commercial interests, we tend to get all the edited, manipulated and photoshopped information plus photographs. Most of the photos and reviews pushed on the internet are to entice us to pay for that wonderful trip and holiday. Their primary objective is not to make you happy but to earn some money from you. After looking at the photoshopped snaps, we imagine the beauty of the place and our expectations reach the absurd levels based on our individual capacity to imagine. Once we reach this place and experience the location, our photoshopped images cannot match with the reality most of the time. Now, in this case, the location may be wonderful in reality, but instead of appreciating the beauty of the place, we spent the entire holiday in comparing the reality with photoshopped images and phony reviews read on some website. There is nothing wrong with the reality, your imagination is not suiting with the reality. That is the main source of unhappiness.

Second biggest reason behind unhappiness is our constant comparison with others. Our sense of happiness and dejection does not depend on our own reality, but it is based on how others are doing compared to ourselves. If we are getting 10% increment and others are getting 8%, we are happy. But if others are getting 12% and we are at 10%, we feel dejected. The increment we are getting remains the same, our feeling of happiness or dejection is based on whether others are doing better or worse than ourselves. It is a complex case of low self-esteem, and lack of self-confidence, nevertheless there is no cure for this disease of increased relative happiness quotient. We must get over our constant urge to decide our sense of feelings based on comparison with others.

Another important reason behind the gap between expectation and reality is our innate mechanism of upward mobility. Our constant urge to improve every aspect of our life. Our needs want and aspirations never get satiated at any point in life. Whatever we are experiencing today must be better than our past. Whatever we are earning today must be substantially more than our earning in the past. Our current car must be bigger and expensive than the previous one. We are never happy with what we have today. Instead of enjoying our current achievements, we always crib about our past and worry about our future. This constant to and fro between the past and unknown future is making our current life unhappy.

A realistic expectation is important in our workplaces and life since our mental frame of happiness can do wonders with our productivity and can avoid a lot of stress and anxiety at the workplace and in personal life.

Categories: : Non-Fiction