The Great Expectations Problem

In 12 years I've had a lot of time for soul searching and self-evaluation. In that period I've found out a lot of things about myself. The truth I've found most pertinent to myself, and almost every other person's biggest life issues is this... (drum roll) The biggest problems most of us have in life center around one problem, what I call an expectation problem.

To many this might seem self-evident. To others it may cause some reflection or the thought that, no it is actual difficulties that are at the root of my problems. I've suffered from an illness, been through difficulties you can't even imagine, etc. I don't discount that all difficulties shape us and tend to create hardship that molds the way we view life. The scars of such difficulty alone can cause great pain in our lives. I don't want to lay down all inclusive stereotypes so I'll just share this revelation from my own perspective and you can be the judge of your own life.

I'm not sure how my friends would describe me growing up. I probably was always a bit more abnormal than I'd like to admit but for the most part I was an amiable, high performing individual who was very confident in my ability to achieve. I took on an underdog mentality and loved a challenge. I was never the smartest, most athletic or most charming, but made up for what I lacked with tireless effort, especially in the charming arena (that's a joke). A lot of people would probably describe me as arrogant and holier than thou. I honestly had very little self-esteem and gained all my confidence from performance. In high school and freshman year in college it was easy to be confident because I always achieved. Whatever mattered the most to me I found the ability to excel.

A side note is this- I wanted to be a lawyer since about 8th grade. I always dreamed of going to University of Chicago or Northwestern for law school. I wanted to be in business law and do mergers and acquisitions. Honestly, I'm not sure I knew anything about mergers and acquisitions but it sounded prestigious to me. I even went and visited with one of my Dad's business lawyers for his company several times in high school and college. Like most 14-18 year olds, I thought I had life figured out. I was given more than ample educational resources in life to be able to achieve anything I put my mind to and I thought the only way I wouldn't become a lawyer was if I found something else along the way that interested me more. I knew the grades and LSAT scores I needed to get into those schools and I knew what undergraduate programs would be helpful and appropriate. I had it pretty well figured out and I had it figured out long before most of my friends had decided on which college to attend, or even at which ones to which they'd apply.

Drop this back to when my issues started after my freshman year at college. The bottom floor fell out from under me and I was falling faster than I could find something other than air to grasp onto. Without going into detail, the first few years were a mess and it was all about survival. Half of my brain was just trying to hold on to anything that gave me purpose and value enough to live and the other half was trying to smash my fingers from the grasps of what kept hope alive. It was a hard time. (that is the biggest euphemism ever. Once again, if I was honest about those times it would be expletive filled and turn off many of my readers.)

Fast forward a bit and I found myself in a more stable position trying to figure out what to do with my life, working my way, sluggishly through school and in a stable therapeutic environment. I would tell my therapist all of my expectations. I needed an education so I could go back to getting into law school and yaddy yaddy yaddy (yup, I just Seinfelded that!). He would so gently and clandestinely, so that I thought it was my own idea, help me lower that expectation. First it was I'd probably never go to law school. Then it was I'd probably never get a graduate degree. Then it was I probably wont be able to go to a prestigious business school. Then it was it might take me longer than I expected. Then it was I'll probably never be a CEO. Then it was I'll probably never be an upper-level manager. Then it was I'll probably never be a mid-level manager. Then it was I may never be able to deal with the stresses of management. Then it was I'm not sure I can work full time and support my family. Now I find myself somewhere between figuring out how many hours I can work and what kind of job and whether it's better long term to be a stay at home dad until my kids are at least in school so my wife can work on supporting us more fully. It's good fun. I tell all this because I obviously had a lot of high expectations for life and a lot of them obviously centered around the ability to provide for my family and admittedly, also be able to stroke my own ego.

In that process of continually pushing myself and then falling short of my expectations, the Bipolar cycles sucked and I thought it was because I was bipolar that I wasn't happy. How can I be happy when I can't be consistent in life? How can I be happy when I'm literally depressed a lot of the time? How can I find stability and a path of comfort when I could wake up in the morning and want the world to end, when yesterday was great? That's a crappy reality to adjust to for most people. When the internal mechanism of comfort in our minds doesn't function properly and is creating a good portion of the storms, it's hard to find shelter. We can't really escape our brains, in fact, they are usually the place of mental solace we go to in the storm. In my life, I've found that there are few roofs when it comes to difficulty, because the storm that is beating hard on me outside is coming down just as hard on the inside when I seek shelter. What I've come to learn in time, though is that it's not usually the storm that is the greatest culprit for dissatisfaction in my life. In fact, for some reason God seems to give us an innate ability to weather quite difficult storms. As humans, we tend to be survivors, we have innate ability to fight and battle until we have nothing left, often thinking we can't push any further, only to find we've found a 3rd, 4th or 5th wind.

What tends to bring most of us down when facing adversity is the juxtaposition between where we find ourselves in difficulties and the expectation we had for our life or the situation. We feel like we should be able to handle it better, or it shouldn't affect us physically or emotionally as much as it does. We feel like it doesn't line up with the optimistic view of our childhood or with how we were taught life was supposed to be. We don't understand how God can love us and allow us to struggle so much.

Our whole life is shaped by expectation. That is why the first years of marriage are really hard for many and filled with adjustments. We come to marriage with an expectation of what it will be like, usually stemming from the understanding we gained of marriage for the example our parents set. That will lead us to expect our partner to uphold certain habits, tradition and roles that we know to be part of being a family or couple. They will come with their own expectations. Sometimes we have negative expectations because of difficulties we've seen in the circumstances we were raised. We may distrust our spouse or question the sincerity of their motives or compliments. There are a full range of expectations we come to marriage with and trying to find the balance between give and take with the expectations of our spouse can be a difficult dance.

The same is true internally. Most of us grow up with dreams and aspirations. We want to be something better, to make those we love proud and to see how high we can fly. We want to prove to the world we have value and maybe even to those who have doubted us or not loved us enough. We want and yearn for significance, at least I did. I thought that who I was tied to those expectations I had for myself and life. What I found when I peeled back the layers was the antithesis of my belief system.

I realized over years and years of adjusting my expectations for life was that most of my disappointment and anger was tied more around the expectations I wasn't meeting than around my actual illness. I had set up a whole fantasy of what was a measure of a meaningful life and how that was applicable to me and had put all that pressure on myself to meet that expectation, when in reality the expectation was only internal. No one else said my value only came from being a CEO or even a college grad. My parents never said they'd give up on me if I couldn't be something more. My wife never said she was going to leave me if I didn't find a way to support her. I put those expectations on myself so when I felt like I was failing at meeting those expectations, that disappointment loomed far greater and deeper than the disappointment of the millionth depressive cycle I'd had. It's easy to accept you have Bipolar disorder when you can quantifiably track your mood swings and remember being in this same trench again and again. It becomes a lot harder to accept that when you think that it is why you haven't become who you expected you were supposed to be in life.

Don't get me wrong. Having goals and expectations for life is a healthy thing. We all dream and hope for a brighter future to push us to be something better. It creates growth and builds character. The problem looms when we fall short of expectations. How do we adjust to that? Do we reframe the expectation and see that in our zeal we may have fallen short but came so much further than we would have if we didn't try? The problem with most of us is we aren't the most rational beings. We often believe our expectations for who we should be are completely rational, when the truth is most of us are far more average than we like to imagine. We believe that it is normal to expect that we perform at our best all the time or even 90% of the time when the truth is we can't. We believe everyone else in the world is so much better than us because we spend way too much time comparing their strengths to our weaknesses and looking at their stupid Facebook posts. We allow a 1% percentile of athletes, movie stars, musicians, politicians and who ever else we idolize to skew our view when they don't represent a reality or the projection of our future for most any of us. Our expectations are a product of our belief system about who we are and what brings us value. I've found the only place to find true value is in God.

This is what God has taught me. You may or may not choose to believe, but I know it to be true: Heavenly Father loves me for one simple reason, the same reason we love our children as parents. He created me and wants only the best for me. Just like a truly loving parent who is able to separate themselves from the fears and anxieties of life, His love is unconditional. He will love us no matter what we become in life, no matter how rich or poor or how educated or simple minded. He loves the murderer and taught us to love our enemies. He loves the beggar the same, if not more than the banker, and as the scriptures show, a lot more than the lawyer (that's kind of a joke). I always wanted to be a lawyer. I found God just wanted me to be His child.

I removed the expectation for whom I need to be to be good enough. I try everyday to do a little more and I measure my life in three year periods to ensure progress of some sort is being made. What I've let go of is trying to create an expectation around who or what I need to be.  My life is measured in the conversations here or there with someone in need and in the type of love I show my son, wife and others. That may seem far too simple a life and way too convenient a reality to believe, but it works for me. I've removed most of the expectations I feel outside of what God has taught me I must be in terms or morals, ethics and obedience to His laws. I found that in removing those expectations I tend to see more clearly God's expectations for me, and more importantly, His great love for me and everyone else. The promises He gives us are eternal in nature, expectations set towards eternity. Job knows better than most that God gives us little sure expectations for what this life will hold. At worst case, our consolation will come at death. If that is our expectation than all of us will find our reality a lot more manageable than Job's.

So ponder on this a moment. Is what is giving you trouble a result of the things happening to you in your life or is it more a result of your expectations, hindered or thwarted by the difficulties? If you're completely honest with yourself, I think you'll find your answer leaning toward the latter.