Are You Expecting?

Don't get me wrong, it's about expecting from people and not expecting people :) . This discussion explores if we should keep expectations from our friends, loved ones, family etc. or not.

What started as my friend's advice to me, became a discussion and finally a blog. So, here it goes -

My friend wrote:

..life is best when we don’t expect anything.. the more we expect.. the more depressed we get.. We should be entirely self reliant..n help others when they need help. Maybe the person u want help from wont be there.. but for every friend lost, a better friend is made.. for such is life...

I wrote:

I know.. we should not expect.. that is the root cause of all misery, but I still don’t agree that we should not expect.. if we do not expect anything from anybody.. no friends, no family.. nobody… then we are just by ourselves, leading a solitary life. Isn’t this a form of existentialism where you don’t have anything to fall back upon?

Selflessness is good.. but is not applicable everywhere. These days, how many people do we have in the name of family? Our parents and a sibling? Parents are generally of a different era and sibling is generally indifferent. And after marriage, in most cases only the partner. If we are not allowed to expect anything from them also, then what is it that we call as "home"?

As I see it, "Live life as it comes" is same as "Live a meaningless Life". Even if you are doing charity, with no monetary or social intentions… but still you expect a smile from the needy and a blessing for you.. isn’t it?

I don’t know if I am making sense but this is something that has bothered me for long. I am fully convinced that we SHOULD expect. The question I don’t have an answer to is "how much to expect". How to decide when you are overdoing it? What separates expectation from over-expectation? Because expectation is also a relative term. What is expectation for me is possessiveness for somebody else. And what I see as my right is a breach of personal space for somebody else. That is the thing I fail to understand.

Also, it is a very difficult chemistry… I have seen this happening with myself. Some of my friends complain that I over-expect whereas others have not even felt it slightly. Some people, even if they never realize it, have this inherent quality to be at par with others’ expectations always. They simply do not leave any room for complaint. I am always sure that they will do something that they should be doing. I don’t have to tell them to do something.. it just happens as a rule. I have two such friends, probably that is why they are my closest buddies. On the other hand, there are others who could never do justice to my efforts.

My friend wrote:

All your point are VERY valid here..i really cannot contest it.. mostly cos yes, sumtimes I also become ‘possesive’ in my expectations – and sometimes I don’t like to expect at all

and this is not existentialism – it is nirvana – to live a life where you are content and happy and self-reliant. Read that essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson – read it once and it will answer these questions. Self reliance is not the same as an unhappy existence.. according to me existing comes when you expect better.. but when you cant get it

It is not easy – perhaps that's why sages reach such a stage after yrs of sacrifice, cutting away meditation etc..

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This is it. Now I am reading that essay. But before that, can I expect your thoughts on this?

The Professionally Correct Attitude

We get two kinds of paths at every turn of life. One is the right path and other is the wrong one. And it is only for the courageous, virtuous and determined people to choose the right path. Those who choose the wrong path end up nowhere and eventually perish. This is what our grandparents, teachers, moral books and fairy tales tell us.

But as I see it and face it everyday in the course of life, the situation is absolutely different. Life does not offer us such easy choices. It is very easy to choose the right path among the two. It might be difficult to walk on it but at least it is easy to choose.

The real test of life is about choosing from two seemingly rights paths. This is what I, and probably many of us, face everyday. I encounter situations when all my alternatives weigh almost equally and then I am asked to choose one. Depending on the difference of situations, the criteria to choose also changes. Sometimes (rarely) we know the criteria and hence can find an answer. But most of the time, it is even more difficult to find the right way to choose the right path rather than choosing it. This is the problem I want to discuss here.

Since childhood, or at least since I remember, I have had an argumentative nature. If I am convinced about a particular point (not necessarily correct, but who can decide that anyway?), I can fight till my last breath to prove it. This doesn’t mean I have no respect for others’ point of views or criticism or feedback, I would be the first one to gracefully accept my fault and try to learn provided I have very convincing and fool-proof counterarguments. But then, that again is an easy choice because I have been proved wrong. It is easy to choose between black and white but life seems all grey to me. I would keep quoting examples and scenarios to prove my point. And most of the time the argument closes because of time constraint.

The problem that arises due to this confusion is that sometimes I almost cross the line between debate and adamancy. This happens when I have already had a non-convincing argument at length. After a while, if the opponent is not able to convince me, I am not sure if I close my mind towards his PoV. Every time it happens so that the discussion starts rotting and remains inconclusive.

In professional scenario, this behavior of mine has been taken negatively at few occasions. Mostly when, at a later stage, I am proved wrong. However, there have been more situations in which I am proved right.

Now, my confusion is: Till I am proved wrong, why should I leave my PoV? And if I stick to it then how do I judge that I am not being rigid? If I have not been proved wrong, then why should I accept an opinion which is not mine? The question here is beyond right and wrong because nothing has been proved wrong yet.

Let me quote two situations to substantiate my confusion:

Situation 1: I was in a conference where we had people from all over the world. We were made to play a game of cards. I was the junior-most in designation among the group. We were given a list of rules to read and then it was taken back. After every hand, people were shuffled between different groups. After the first game, there was confusion about the rules. Everybody was stating a different rule. However, as I remembered the rules of my table perfectly, I almost negated their points and stuck to my rules. After 3-4 hands, it was revealed that the game rules were different on every table, that’s why the confusion. I realized my mistake that actually everybody was correct, but I was so convinced about the rules that I simply ignored them.

Ques: I know I became rigid. I did not know that they were right, but I knew that I was absolutely correct. So, what wrong did I do if I trusted my memory completely? Can’t it be termed as self-confidence as against authority?

Situation 2: While discussing a new structure for an application that our team was developing, I proposed my plan for the same. I was in discussion with four other people (again, all of them senior to me). They all refused to accept it and started finding faults in it. They tried hard to convince me, but I offered equal number of rebuttals. Rather, I gave them real-time examples of possible problems in their plan. After a while, they all were against me and it was a 4:1 situation. Being junior to all of them, at most I pulled my idea back but did not accept there opinion. Two days later, our group manager proposed the same plan as mine and left no scope for arguments.

Ques: I earned a bad reputation for being extremely argumentative and rigid but when I knew that I was correct, why would I leave my decision and accept some other thought?

The outcomes of both the above situations were different but the corollary was same - I earned a bad name.

To all my professional guides, mentors, friends and philosophers, please tell me what the “Professionally Correct Attitude” is!

Transfers are Much More than Transfers

Transfers are generally matter of days, or at most weeks. But here it took me more than 2 months to come back to normalcy. I left Bangalore in March and have come back to blogging now!

But now that I am here.. I am hopefully here to stay.

Here comes my latest blog.....