Expectations

I seem to be thinking a lot about expectations these days. What happens with me is that a lot of the time I do a little too much thinking and I end up over thinking something when I could be thinking about something else. Just something to think about...

When I think of expectations, I first like to think about what others expect of me. Interestingly, the list of people who have expectations of me is quite long. Off the top of my head, here's a list of all the people in my life who have certain expectations of me: immediate family (my parents, my brother), extended family (aunts uncles, cousins, friends who are so close that we consider each other family), friends (best friends, close friends, Hungarian friends, American friends, school friends, outside of school friends), students in school (students I have in class, students I don't have in class but still come to me for help or just to chat), parents of the students I teach, my principal, faculty members, and I need to include my pets (a dog, two cats, 2 parakeets). Everyone I mentioned in my list has expectations. I could easily list what their expectations are of me. I would have no trouble doing so because, and I hate to say it, well, because of my age. When it comes to expectations, parents, family, friends...when you have people who have been in your life for over 40 years, you just know what they expect. We don't tend to think about it though because it's just something we do with automaticity. As far as expectations surrounding school, I know what others expect of me because it's my 25th year of teaching and experience and life tend to be very excellent teachers. I also think that there are constants in expectations. Treating everyone with respect, dignity, consideration, thought, and civility are basic and go without saying in my book of opinions. Of course, I expect the same in return. It's funny how I was thinking about those closest to me and those with whom I have a closer relationship as opposed to strangers. When, in fact, everyone deserves those basic expectations, don't they? And we, too, deserve the same in return, don't we? Would there ever be a time when someone wouldn't deserve to be treated with respect, dignity, consideration, thought, and civility? I'm sure there are times when we don't treat those with whom we are close to in a way that is expected. That's were disappointment comes in to play. All of us make mistakes. There are those times when we unintentionally and without thinking, we do something or say something that is anything but what the other person would expect. We all make mistakes. I truly believe that we learn more from our mistakes that our successes. Mistakes somehow hit us harder that when we succeed at something.

So, if I think about what I expect of others, I can easily say that I, too, would like to be treated with respect, dignity, consideration, thought, and civility. If we all did just that, then a lot of our troubles wouldn't be so troublesome, now would they? It is because we don't live in a perfect world with a perfect family, with perfect friends, with perfect students and parents, with perfect faculty and administrators, and even our pets aren't perfect, that we need to take time to just think about our expectations and the expectations of others. As my mother always tells me: "make sure you take a good long look at yourself before you begin to criticize someone else for a fault or a mistake because you may find out that you're not as mistake-free or fault-free as you think you are" and trust me on this one, my mom is almost always 99.9% right.

If anyone expected more from this blog, I apologize for not meeting your expectations. Hopefully, the next time I decide to write a blog, I'll meet your expectation. However, you can always comment on what's been written and I'll take that into consideration the next time I write my blog entry.