Great Expectations
People do care about you. They genuinely think about you. Those were my thoughts until recently. I really thought that people genuinely cared about. And when I say people, I mean people other than my parents. They have been with me no matter what and I believe that they always will be. ITs the other I am talking about. The ones we pick and choose to be part of our world. The ones we open up to at one am In the morning talking about our deepest desires and wishes mixed in with our secret fears that are stirred into our night mares. You know, the usual. However, as much as I thought this was something I wanted to believe, the more I realized that we cannot put so much faith into developing movie like relationships with the people in our lives. The media portrays relationships as cute, lively, lovely, rainbow and cupcakes and you know all that fluff. And then when all of a sudden, our best friend doesn’t rush over to our house in the middle of the night to uplift and eat icing with us, we get devastated. We think that people must care about us so much and even if they look away for even a second, we feel betrayed and as if no one understands us. We feel as outcasts. We feel ended. Which I have to be honest, I have very much felt. I always felt like I was constantly being let down by the people in my life and I was angry that they weren’t meeting my expectations. I didn’t understand why. All they had to be was good friends to me. However, I felt as if they never were. I was so self absorbed about how I felt that somewhere along the way I forgot that they were also humans that need space and attention. They were also people who craved being craved. They were us. We were them. We all wanted the same thing. We all wanted someone to care about us so much that they would drop everything and be with us. And this also goes for relationships. We all want that perfect, cute adorable relationship where you sit on each others’ lap, smile, do cute things in public and share the intimacy of a couple in the movies. Everyone wants those things. However, when everyone wants all the same thins, we forget about each other. We forget that the other exist and instead we just get mad at each other for not fulfilling each others fantasies. It is an insane cycle. Which can be indeed broken, with a single action. Let go of your expectations. They aren’t as great as you thought they were. You don’t need something in the movies, you just need real and raw. As soon as you lower your expectations for someone, you no longer hold a bar above their head for which they have to meet in order to be your friend. Just let it go and be a kinder human. Buy some food and give it to them. Make them some jewelry. Invite them over to your house. Do something nice. Lower your expectations. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find yourself happier with all that weight off your shoulders.