Opaque Layers of Expectations

Child in the Rose Garden, Artwork by Berthe Morisot

I took my tab closer to me and again, started drawing. The theme is pastel but the design looked awkwardly gaudy. I again had to rely on the undo scheme and it’s the fifth time. I threw the tab like a frisbee on the bed. Thankfully, it was at a mild speed. I preferred lying on my bed. I lifted one leg up towards the ceiling. I started making invisible images with my big toe. I perhaps looked like a cocky ballet dancer who just changed the rehearsed composition and could even miss the foot flex in the last round. It was a pretty rare moment of my blocked mind. I could just concentrate on doing nothing. But then I again thought about the photograph. I got the photograph this morning from my encyclopedia book. It again pulled me back to that droopy day. In that snap, an adolescent me looked extremely adventurous; she had a sling bag on her left shoulder, a feature phone in her right hand, and a proud face thinking of the permission to go out with her elder cousins. I wore a pink, fluffy frock and smiled broadly at the camera.

Days before that day, I had a long discussion with my elder cousins. I suggested the movie; I shortlisted the restaurants; I brought them newspapers; and I showed them the different theatres. I pleaded to my mom in the midst of our family lunch, “Please. Please... I want to go. I promise I will behave appropriately. I will cross the road slowly. I won’t eat ice-cream...Please Mamma!!!”

My cousins, they all were almost a decade older than me. I knew that but never realised. I always tried to be intellectually present to understand their language. I read more books; kept myself updated with new technological hacks to be like them; watched different documentaries to discuss about. Yeah, my range never went up more than this. But truly, the things weren’t the same as I expected or believed. After getting ready, my mother took my ecstatic photograph. But it did not go as I had hoped.

I waited the entire evening for them. They were supposed to pick me up. When the timing of the movie was ticking in my dining area, I started sobbing. When the plot was probably in the middle, I threw my bag on the floor. And when I knew I had no chance of going out, I cried badly hugging my mother. She insisted on taking me to my favorite restaurant but I denied. That night, I heard a bitter conversation. They came and said, “We felt it wasn’t an appropriate movie for her age.”

I heard my mother’s voice from my room, “If you felt so you could have discussed that with me. It’s not the right way. She’s...”

I shut my room’s door. They kept a chocolate box on the coffee table and left. And perhaps they left forever from the list of ‘my people’. It felt that the “Araby” story just showed a glimpse into reality.

I do not know why I still find that one of the hardest realisation of my life. Perhaps because, for the first time, I realised that you should not expect from the wrong herd. But when can we find the exact road map to decide where to put the rightful sense of expectation? Where should we expect? And who would be those people? It’s not simple.

I understand that there are two different ways to deal with. One, you expect and then rely on them if you can find the layers of happiness. Or, second, you find the layers of happiness by yourself and then invite others to share that joy. To follow that second slot it definitely takes time, a few experiences, and a boost of courage to do something by yourself which you would probably expect from others. It surely sets us free to riddle out the opaque layers of expectations. It’s blurry, but it needs a little rub.

But we can’t just negate the value of expectations. We all live by that. Some of us go in a positive direction and some find pessimism. Fortunately, positivity sparks thoughts like, “I deserve peace” or “I can overcome this challenge” or “This thing will happen for my good.” These senses conjoin hope with expectation. And we find power in that positivity. But if we give the power to somebody else, that creates a gap between our expectations and their work towards that. It’s an unbalanced and more of a like a messy jugglery act. We need to realise that power should come from our own balanced choices to meet those expectations.

Expectation is like a sword; no, it’s not a double-edged. This sword needs to be tamed by our own values and desires. We should know how to use that without hurting ourselves. It calls for inner power. I define that power as Ina*. When we know that these sets of expectations can be nurtured with our inner power, then that could be embraced positively. We have millions of expectations, but those expectations only ask for our work to knot that circle of happiness. It is a warrior act, but it is only with ourselves on an individual spectrum; nobody else should define that.

(*In Sanskrit, Ina (इन).—a. means determined or anything that is powerful.)