the fallacies of expectation

expectation - a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future - as defined by my little widget on my mac.

before i go off on a super tangent i'll try to at least begin my rant with some sort of foundation. what is greater in emotional magnitude, losing $100 or gaining $100? getting a new car, or totaling your new car b/c of your own fault and not getting a penny from insurance? i believe that the negatives in life are more powerful than the positives.

if we can quantify emotions, let us pretend that we agree that when you lose $100, your emotional point system will decrease by 3 points; however, when you gain $100, you only gain 2 emotional points. thus, if the events have equal chances, u're expected to be left off less happy, or emotionally negative. you will be emotionally negative if u were to add up ur emotional points from an equal but opposite action/result such as the ones mentioned above.

the very idea of an expectation means that you think that it is more likely something will happen versus it not happening. so when it does happen, u're not at all surprised. u're satisfied, ur expectations have been met as anticipated. however, when ur expectations are not met, you are dissatisfied, unhappy, disappointed, etc. much like above, you're emotionally negative. yet, as stated above, if we were to quantify both end results, the positive side of meeting your expectations are less than the effect of the negative side of disappointment. thus, having expectations is a losing way to life. we can generalize expectations to hope, faith, beliefs, etc.

my point is, it's better to not expect anything at all simply b/c disappointment cannot be offset by another expectation being met. it's better to not expect, not hope, not believe anything and take life as it comes. this way, all the good in life is a pleasant surprise. and well, expecting the worse and then the worse happening, it's nothing surprising.

expectations, hopes, promises, beliefs, etc, their true power is only realized when they're not met, violated, broken... it's only then we understand how foolish we were, through the stupidity and naivety of it all. so again, better off taking life as it comes. the less u expect, the less disappointment, the more positive surprises.

furthermore, some people will feel safer with their expectations when a certain outcome becomes more consistent and more reliable e.g. every time you turn the key to your car it starts. the more it happens the more confident you become that it will start. you now have the expectation that your car will start tomorrow. that is a total fallacy. it doesn't take a math major to understand the idea of regression to the mean. with any event, there is an average amount of times something is supposed to happen or some sort of probability attributed to it. therefore, the more something happens, provided each event is not completely independent, the more likely the event will not occur.

so to tie the two parts of this blog together i'll say again that two equal but opposite effects have a net negative emotional impact on your well-being. having expectations will make it even worse, since expectations automatically begin you on the positive emotional scale. b/c expectations exhibit their true power when not met, your emotional well-being is far worse off by having expectations.

no expectations, no disappointment.

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