expectations

Just listened to a story on NPR by a couple of journalists who taped conversations with some Wall Street guys shortly after the most recent financial bailout.

They asked the guys if they were grateful for the bailout, if they appreciated being helped by American taxpayers.

The men, who sounded pretty young, to a man insisted that their current 'success' and the fact that they still had jobs was because "I'm smart. Survival of the fittest."

The journalists kept trying to get these guys to admit that the bailout had saved their bacon - that, without it, their banks would have gone under and they would have lost their jobs.

"No way, man," they said. "That had nothing to do with it."

Just how delusional ARE these people???

The journalists went on to talk about being in Haiti, and speaking to both some of the very rich and very poor who'd been affected by economic difficulties.

They pointed out that the rich folks seemed to be FAR more vocal in complaining about their woes - they went on and on about how unfair it was. The poor folks, on the other hand (and one of the journalists pointed out that poor Haitians are among the poorest people in the world), seemed less vociferous, more accepting of their lot.

The journalists speculated as to why there was such a disparity in response between the poor and the rich. One suggested that it might be simply a difference in expectation: The rich EXPECTED far more than the poor did, so they felt more let down. I guess if you don't expect much, you don't feel so disappointed when things don't go your way.

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The thing that's speaking to ME here about all this is this idea that you have some CONTROL over your own expectations.

Which, to me, is BULLSHIT.

You have no more control over your expectations than you do over your emotions.

Expectations, like emotions, just HAPPEN. They're like the weather - they come and go, and they're based on environmental CONDITIONS. They are NOT something under your control. You can control, to some degree, how you REACT to said emotions (or expectations), in that you can steer your behavior. But you can't change how it makes you FEEL. The feelings just HAPPEN, and then you react, either with an action or a thought.

Expectations come from experience. Like the whole celebrity phenomenon. If you grow up being a nobody, and then, through some freak series of events - chance, luck, being in the right place at the right time (which are pretty much all different ways of saying the same thing) - you are flung up into the spotlight, into the bright glare of fame and fortune, and then you FALL again, from that lofty post - Well. You're going to be hurt. You're going to feel let down, disappointed, betrayed. And people in such a situation ALWAYS become angry, or at least resentful. The way they EXPRESS said anger may vary - some may turn it inward and become depressed, and drink their way through it to numb the pain; others may become destructive, and turn their anger outward onto others, into angry rantings or even physical violence. And all the shades in between.