Relative

Dear blog,

I'm here again. Tonight I am inspired by a little incident that happened to one of my loved ones.

1. Boy bought Girl present; he idyllically bore high hopes of an on cloud nine reaction.
2. Girl receives present. No reactions.
3. Boy was devastated.

Moral of the story - expectations kill happiness.

Boy expected Girl to be happy. Girl expected the gifts of her dreams (which she apparently didn't get). If none expected anything, life would be much happier.

Because everything is relative, because disappointments only arise with predetermined thresholds - your expectations.

If we don't expect, we won't have a standard for us to tell if the actual outcome is above or below the bar. & so, the disappointment we experience will be less intense (& the pleasant surprise will be more intense) than the one that we feel when we allow our expectations to wander a little too far. So not expecting is a win-win right?

But unfortunately we all expect; with sadder people expecting a little more than the others. Less, more, above, below, sadder - everything is comparative. We have the power to choose if we want to compare, be it with other people or with your own wishful imagination. & often we make the choice to compare which I find ironic because we never like being compared to others, by others, so why do we inflict such unhappiness upon ourselves? Innate sadism?

Comparing yourself to others only makes you sad because there is always someone out there who is better than you, unless you are the best. But even if you are the best I still think that you could be sad because afterall you may realise that being the best may not be the best for you.

Being happy is being contented with what you have; setting targets you seek to achieve, not expectations you ought to fulfill. It has always been the journey, never the end that satisfies. I think we deserve to be happy as long as we are better than the person we are the day before. We may not be there yet, but we're heading whitherward. That's all that matters.