The Slow Squeeze Of Expectations

We are full of expectations. How things should be, why they are not. Why we are not.
​Our expectations, those of others, they can wrap us like a python snake until our emotional air, our essence
is one short breath of gone.
What is it like to live without expectations? I confess, I don';t know. I seem to have quite a few expectations of all kinds.
Is it possible to live life without expectations? Is it healthy? It is true, we all need to know what we can expect from others and from our environment. That's how the brain works best – in patterns which
makes us feel safe. That is where laws and rituals and tradition come in. They give the world, and us that are in it, a sense of structure and we definitely need that. Otherwise we are likely to get anxious
and all the behaviors that anxiety speaks into start to show up in us. Not our best selves to be sure. Some say expectations are premeditated resentments. They can be, without a doubt. How does one pull down the expectation meter? I think it is a discipline, a determination, that you will
live in who you are, who they are, how it is, without deciding that it/they/you should be another way at THAT VERY MOMENT or in the past, when they, or you, made THAT decision, said THAT sentence,
had THAT behavior. That is HARD. Pulling down the expectation meter is also a decision that YOU can change your response, that you can
be less reactive or less stompy (it's a word). And then seek to understand their perspective. Stand on their side of the shadow of expectation and see what you see. Maybe a new recognition of them.
Maybe some insight into you.
And oh by the way, that is HARD. Very HARD. Because we have to give up the expectation that is
squeezing us and choose to go limp. Slip out of expectations choke hold and then decide what we want
to do about them/they/it/us. Perhaps we all just start with a breath.