Sometimes one can be rather mystified on days when one really gets going with the walking and the thinking...it is not an unpleasant thing even though one wishes that one could solve some of the puzzles and say, 'a-ha', and then go and share them with some folks (without sounding like an unhinged bat). Without sharing some of life's puzzles there's absolutely no meaning in the 'a-ha' moment.
It's been said that one must expect nothing. Not goodness nor kindness nor commiseration nor gratitude nor respect nor praise nor rewards, and certainly not - God forbid - love in life. I'm sure this makes absolute sense at some level and if nothing else one can be assured that if one doesn't expect anything one will never wonder, even if one is a fairly average person, about some of the things that pass for sanity and one will very rarely wonder whether one is growing silently but surely madder and slower and stupider with every passing day and for sure one will never be saddened or hurt or feel lost or lonely or disappointed or restless. But as a friend once said in a different context, I can intellectually accept this but emotionally I resist. I know that one must expect nothing when living in the world and when I think of it (as I do) I think that it is but a stroke of luck or karma (or something else?) that I have, for the time being, cigarettes to smoke, enough to eat, clean water, a roof over my head, and functioning limbs and physical organs and a temporary job that lets me pay the bills - so how can I expect for more?
But if truth be told: after accepting or at least resigning oneself to the idea that one is more or less an average person - with seemingly common desires and tries as honestly as possible to do minimum harm - it seems impossible to expect nothing.
For one thing, there are some very mundane expectations. One realises at some point that the very least that one expects (and sometimes with no feeling attached to the expectation and sometimes with great annoyance and sometimes with liquid joy and sometimes with a matter-of-factness and sometimes with a listlessness) is to wake up the next day when one falls asleep at night even though one does know that one will die one day. Bizarre example it may well be but how many everyday expectations then are simply hidden and how many are we blind to simply because we don't really think about such matters? We don't expect to suddenly be in the middle of a violent war. We don't expect to be brutalized. We don't expect to get into an accident and be maimed for life. We don't expect to lose the ones we love...regular middle-class people don't expect to go hungry at night and don't expect to be without clean water and don't expect to not have a place to sleep at night. And all of these are expectations, and rather big ones too. And these just barely skim the surface of our pot of expectations. We know very well (or at least some people do) that things might change in the snap of a finger and we know that for countless people and lives these things are real but we are able to, for the most part, not think about the same happening in our own lives (which includes the lives we love). In short - we don't expect such things to descend on our heads.
It is also true that some people worry and some people brood and some people go mad when they start keeping a tab on even the very basic expectations that we carry around like an invisible cloak...yet other people wonder and worry and brood and enter God-knows what dark chambers and are still able to maintain their wits about them, and some of us pay no attention because maybe not questioning the basic expectations is the way to get on with this and lead at least a somewhat normal life, and the only times that we sometimes realise that we hold certain expectations is when some of our expectations are violated, and this can happen at the real and at the surreal level.
And to make a leap but not an unreasonable leap - we also expect some things from our own selves (we expect to be honest, we expect to be civil unless otherwise provoked, we expect to enjoy meeting some people, we expect to work well, we expect to be punctual, we expect to love some people and to be annoyed by others...). And one also expects certain somethings from others (similar things actually: we expect other people too to be basically honest, we expect them not to be gratuitously rude, we expect them too to be punctual for meetings, we expect some people to love us and some others to be annoyed by us...).
We expect some things from, of, and for ourselves and we expect some things for, of, and from others and we even expect others to expect some things from us. And the specific expectations may differ depending upon the relationship we share with the specific others.
So what is it that I've had to accept (and somewhat reluctantly)? Do we expect certain things in life? Yes, we do. Do we expect certain things from others? Yes, we do. Does the expectation itself mean that it will be granted? No, that it certainly does not. But as one writer said, one should learn to expect the unexpected ! - and that goes for the good, bad, and beautiful.
I have not been able to understand the ebbs and flows and the turning of tides in the lives of creatures great and small even though I have been affected by their mysteries. In some other age and time I may have gone around singing around the countryside, and have people chasing me out with stones. Sometimes, in rare moments and in flashes, the nature of life has made perfect sense. God only knows why. I know this only in terms of recollecting the feeling. The feeling came and it passed leaving only a couple of remembered points, and those are the points which glowed harder. Yet the points themselves expect me to act upon them. It's one thing to gaze upon mysteries and these odd points and be utterly fascinated and captivated by them and it would be fine if I were satisfied doing just that (while my monthly bills magically paid themselves or if I could live in a barrel or a tub, eat, and drink what I could find with no other requirements needed nor wanted among other important things!) but I am expected to act upon the bit of knowing that stays. I expect it of myself.
And I think that almost all (if not all) human beings have this sense at some points: a knowing, and a knowing that is peculiar to each human being and a knowing that is unique to a particular human being, and a knowing which is related to (a) do-able expectation(s). And there are do-able expectations although difficult ones that float through or appear as dots. Whether one will fulfill these expectations is a different matter. One cannot predict the future and sometimes by the time one gets to untangle the mess from the meaning one seems to have less and less time left - but one still can't give up without doing one's best. It's one thing to never know what one expects of oneself but to know and then to say that there's nothing to be done about it is somewhat imbecilic.
One can't even say, "I was completely ignorant". One has to stand up on Judgment Day and say after the first round of questions, "I'm sorry Your Honour but I knew a bit but was too lazy and too despairing and kept thinking that time was running out by the time I was 16, so I didn't ever want to try and do the bit of good that I could have. No, Your Honour I'm not trying to impress you by being truthful - since You know all there is to know. No, Your Honour I'm not trying to be a smart aleck. No, Your Honour I'm not giving you excuses. I'm actually trying to explain what happened. No, Your Honour I realise this is not a confession box. I thought I was on the right track...Yes, Your Honour, I realise I did do a lot of navel gazing. Yes, Your Honour I wasted time even when I knew that I wasn't meant to. Yes, Your Honour I kept wanting to keep my cake and eat it too even when I had the suspicion that that is what I was doing. Yes, Your Honour, I did get very tired sometimes. No, Your Honour I didn't think that I had created the world - oh well, Yes, sometimes I thought I might be able to until I realised I was hopelessly incapable of even fixing the whole world - leave alone creating one - even if I were given the power. Yes, Your Honour I did think I had a role nonetheless. No Your Honour I didn't do everything I could. No, You're absolutely right Your Honour I didn't do my best and give my best...Yes, of course Your Honour You're never wrong..."
So there is this obmutacious expectation which lingers...
30th December, 2010
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