The Joy of Low Expectations

My expectations for the small town of Comitan were of such little substance that they barely ceased to exist.

The only reason we were staying there was to be closer to El Chiflon Waterwalls and Montebello Lakes. Most people do a tour from the popular highland town of San Cristobal, but, we wanted to avoid the exceptionally long day trip. I had read that you spend 80% of your time just driving there and back, with little time to enjoy the falls and lakes themselves. We wanted full days and the freedom to explore. We thought that staying in a nothing town would be the trade-off that we had to make to do that.

When we first arrived at the bus station, it was on a busy industrial road, a bit of a no man’s land and as we walked towards our hotel we only saw garages, corner shops, and houses. It was a bit of a ghost town at first. We wondered if we might be spending the night holed up in the hotel room, watching TV and eating a packed lunch dinner.

However, we were proved wrong. As we ventured into the center of town, we found this bright yellow and orange sunburst of a church with checker patterned stairs in a neoclassical style, surrounded by red flowering trees and a statue of a proud jaguar. We were so shocked by how striking it was, simply because we didn’t expect it.

More unexpected was the bustling main plaza. It was charmingly beautiful with gorgeous colonial details and extravagant lampposts and benches surrounded by trees that looked like giant bonsai trees cut into perfect squares. All the way around was lively bars and outdoor dining. We had a lovely evening trying local dishes and I discovered a new favourite Spanish coffee cocktail, Carajillo 43.

It couldn’t have been further from the TV dinner we were expecting and that just added to the childlike joy and delight of everything we stumbled upon.

I wondered if I would have been as delighted by these things if I knew they were coming, if I’d seen pictures already.

It made me think about the joy of going to a place without expectations and allowing yourself to be pleasantly surprised.

All too often I’ve experienced the opposite of this. I’ve gone to a famous place, where I’ve seen hundreds of impossibly perfect photographs of it. I’ve read the guidebook, blog posts, and watched the videos. Using all of this I’ve built it up in my mind, only to be disappointed that it didn’t quite match up. But, that disappointment isn’t the fault of the place, It’s the fault of the false vision of it in my own head before I’ve even been there. It’s the fault of setting expectations that are often just too damn high.

So with this experience and this thought, I decided that the best thing to do with expectations is to leave them behind. You are so much lighter and freer to enjoy a place without the weight and baggage of comparing and wanting somewhere to match what you perceive that it should be in your head.

Ever since Comitan, I tried my best to wander into a place with fresh eyes and to see it for the first time in person and not in my head beforehand.

I want to be pleasantly surprised.

I want to experience the joy of low expectations.

Thank you for reading! Hearts and tips are always welcome and your support is very much appreciated.

This story was orginally published on Medium

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