Expectations (and realities)

 

Daily life is, at its very foundation, a series of meeting expectations.

I don’t mean this in the grand and incredible accomplishment sense. I mean in the most simple and basic of ways.

We flip a light switch, we expect light. We turn the faucet, we expect water.

Everything from making coffee to starting the car, whether we’re thinking of it or not, we expect things to move along a certain path with predictable results. When those results aren’t realized, we likely have a problem.

Take the car.

Most of us have elements of our day mapped out and timed. If our ride to work takes twenty minutes, we almost definitely do not leave two hours before we want to arrive. In fact, I’d bet more of us leave late just about every day, expecting to make the twenty-minute drive in fifteen minutes, as opposed to those that leave thirty minutes ahead of time to have a small cushion.

If we head to the driveway, get in the car and it doesn’t start, we have a problem. (And likely not one, we probably have several.)

The trick is, the world is seldom a perfect place. Often, when it’s imperfect, it’s imperfect without warning.

About a week ago, I made plans with some friends to meet for lunch. Had the place picked out and the time set. When we arrived, there was a hand-written note on the door saying the restaurant was closed for the day. Back in the cars and off to another option.

A long time ago, I had a friend that used to always say she’d be there around whatever-time-ish. You get the idea… 6ish… 4:30ish… 11ish. Her thinking was simple, which was the ish gave her thirty minutes of leeway in either direction. 6ish meant anything from 5:30 to 6:30 was on time. It was a fairly brilliant straightforward piece of honesty. Might be early. Might be late. But because she let you know right from the start anything was possible, she didn’t expect you to consider her early or late as long as she arrived around 6ish.

Life, however, does not move on an ish-based system.

Sometimes we get the signs ahead of time. Car isn’t running right, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when it finally doesn’t start at all. Most of the time, however, it isn’t that clear and comes without warning. The door opens today, something snaps in the doorknob during that turn, and tomorrow it doesn’t open. We never knew we were walking toward a broken doorknob.

Considering how many little things go into the events of a day, it actually is kind of miraculous the amount that go right. It’s so common, that rarely do we even notice when they are going right.

We don’t notice when we pour the orange juice in the morning and don’t spill it.

We don’t notice when the shampoo bottle has plenty remaining.

We don’t notice when the batteries in the television remote are fine… don’t notice when the smoke alarm isn’t beeping… don’t notice when all the clocks in the house aren’t flashing when we walk in.

Even when we do notice, we don’t do anything about it. We notice the bar of soap is getting smaller, notice it for a few days in a row, and we still end up in the shower one morning with the water running and no soap in the dish.

It’s almost as if our activities fall into two categories: met expectations and problem-solving. (And even so, we only notice the problem-solving part, and only notice it on occasion.)

There’s a theory I’ve heard expressed in many ways over many years: All things end badly or else they wouldn’t end. Whatever the source, it’s a quality observation, and one worthy of dozens of essays we’re not going to explore right now. What I wonder though, is how often things continue simply because that’s what we expect.

I’m not trying to be too philosophical here, nor am I asking for an exploration and consideration of relationships. I mean simple things.

When we moved to a new area, people gave us the names of several supposedly great restaurants. What we learned by trying many of them was that there is no good Chinese food near our house. But these folks don’t view it that way. They think these places are preparing good Chinese food. They don’t know any differently, so they keep going back. And we order from them because when you have a craving for egg rolls and there’s no alternatives, well, often you start figuring out how to make them yourself at home.

When I go to sleep tonight, I plan on the alarm I set waking me up if I don’t wake myself up slightly before the time I picked. It’s nice when the day starts as expected.