Journal of Sacred Work

One of the great obstacles to serenity in life is our human inclination to create expectations for things beyond our control. Why won’t the weather cooperate? Why won’t my fellow caregiver work as hard as I do? Why doesn’t my team win as much as I expected? Expectations are natural. Yet they can generate frustrations and steal precious time from the Lake of Now.

What is the difference between expectations and hope? To expect is to project a desire on another thing or person or event. Hope is a belief (not an expectation) that things will turn out for the best.

Television host, author, speaker, and longtime family friend Art Linkletter may seem like an unlikely philosopher to turn too. Yet his long life (he’s 93 and still speaking around the country) is a triumph of hope.  Linkletter offers a useful phrase for today’s meditation: “Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.” If life doesn’t meet your expectations, find ways to sustain hope in the midst of your now.

These things are easy to say and hard to live. Dr. Victor Frankel is the leading exponent of the notion that he or she who has a why, can survive any how. His counsel can be helpful to beleaguered caregivers who, in the midst of compassion fatigue, may have trouble living in the present.

Is the why in your life big enough to help you survive the difficult moments? I like George Weinberg’s sentence: “Hope never abandons you, you abandon it.”

Many of us know the Serenity Prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr, but most of us only know the first lines and think of them as designed for alcoholics, not for us. But his language can help every caregiver.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Here’s the rest of Niebuhr’s brilliant prayer:

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

–Reinhold Niebuhr

But my favorite words on hope were written by Emily Dickinson in her poem that begins::

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all…

To help me deal with the notion of expectations, I made my own effort at writing a meditation that I hope will help you as it did me:

Expectations

Give up

your expectations for

the world

Skies, indifferent to your wishes,

will cloud.

Give up expecting the sun as if it would

shine to meet your expectations.

Give up

your expectations for

others.

Does it help for you to suppose others

will fit the mold you have crafted for them?

Embrace them now as they are & they become

someone to love.

Surrender

your expectations for victory.

Your hand-wringing from the stands will

not turn the tide. God doesn’t care who wins.

Live in the now of defeat as well as triumph.

Expectations are a straight jacket.

Hope has feathers.

Now is the rhythm of your breath.

Exercise:

Watch your thoughts today and become aware of how much of your life is built around expectations about others. How much of your frustration in life comes from people not meeting expectations you have set for them?

Start your five minute or twenty minute meditation with a reflection on the hope in your life. At the end of your meditation, resolve to live in the now, no matter what that now holds.

Summary:

Let go of expectations. Cultivate hope. Live love in your now.