Living Expectations

I had a very interesting conversation last night while I was coming back from Toronto with a friend. He's made a lot of hard and life changing decisions over the past year and I still feel as though I'm catching up on his life. Something he commented on was how he felt as though he was expected to live the expectations others had for his life. That is one of the many reasons why he left the life he had and came to Ontario.

It's great to be in a place in your life that other people can expect something from you. It can be nice to be someone who others want to rely on, but ultimately we need to live our lives in the way we can be held accountable for them. People can expect us to be so many things. They expect clergy to behave in a certain way and musicians to always love playing music. The reality of our lives is that we don't always like what we have to do and some days it's really hard.

There are the expectations that we finish school, find a high paying career, find a partner and start a family. When we change from this plan that is held for our lives, we can feel as though we are letting others down. We're not though. It is only when we change our lives to conform to what others want from us that we are really letting ourselves down. When we let others expectations dictate our choices and stop us from doing something we want to that is when we begin to lose out on life.

Living the expectations others have for our lives can be easy. That's really the only thing it has to promote it. It confines us and stops us from growing and becoming who we really are. We have the potential to be so much, usually much more than anyone really expects of us. When we stop living others expectations and begin to live the expectations we have for our own lives, that's when we truly begin to live. That's when our lives are able to exceed expectations.