For years now I have been unashamedly claiming that I am going to write a book. Well I am, it’s true! Its due date has come and gone countless times, but its author is undaunted. This week I think I even got the title. Mind you, I’ve thought before too. But there’s something about the ring of this title that makes me think I’m ready. And no, I’m not sharing that here!
However, so compelling is it that thoughts have been scrambling over each other in my mind and this month’s newsletter might even turn out, in the end, to seem like a first draft of part of said book. Who knows? We’ll see.
I’ve been thinking about things that interrupt love.
And one of them is expectations.
Expectations are incredibly inconvenient. A veritable design fault when it comes to living a life of love. (I’m convinced, by the way, that this is the point of us human beings. I’m not convinced of much, but I am of this. I think?)
We think things should be a particular way. We expect things to go according to plan. We anticipate, we hope, estimate, reckon, believe. And when things don’t turn out according to what amounts to the product of our imaginations, we are indignant. We are frustrated and upset.
This is such an inefficient way to live our lives, and yet we do it all the time. We make things and people wrong when it happens, and making things and people wrong puts us in relationship to life in a way that is anything but loving.
So, I got to asking “why?” Given that it is patently obvious that we are in control of almost nothing (apart from our response to what is happening – and that, it turns out, is a big thing to have control over), expecting life to dedicate itself to making us happy is foolish. Downright so.
I think it is because we humans, unlike any other mammal – or other species of animal – are born deeply needy. And that profound level of vulnerability and need persists for an inordinate amount of time in comparison to our fellow mammals.
As babies we can do nothing for ourselves, apart from poop and sleep and suck, and some babies even experience agonising struggles with those functions.
So, built into our need for survival is the requirement to expect help. Some of us get really lucky in this department. The lucky ones are parented by people who are conscious, grounded in themselves, well supported by other people who are either paid to help, and even better who love both the parents and their babies so much they want to help, resourced with things like financial security and good health, and who themselves were parented by people just like them. As you can see from this recipe, these parents are few and far between.
Some of us remain lucky but get parents who are several moves away from the above. More likely they are privileged but nuclear, both working, both tired at the end of the day, needing to outsource the care of their babies to people who they pay but don’t really know, and who are therefore stressed. These parents were probably also parented by people with a similar enough set of circumstances. So, they are less grounded in themselves, since they have inherited the stress of their stressed parents.
And some babies are not lucky at all.
Most of us will therefore experience, from the outset, varying degrees of unmet needs. Our central nervous systems will, early on, become deranged by this. We will not learn soothing. We will learn coping and survival. When our expectation of met needs is thwarted, we will do what all humans do. We will get upset. And our being upset will upset the people who are failing us. They will be upset that we are upset, and we will learn that also. That it is not ok to be upset. (Nothing could be further from the truth. It is as natural to be upset as it is to breathe).
If the normal course of events were that we all got into the really lucky department, even then, at some point, our grounded, calm, well-resourced parents will disappoint us. Failing one’s children is a clause in the parenting agreement. It will happen whether any of us like it or not (we do not). But if we have, prior to this, had lots of experience of what it feels like to have our needs met, we might be well-resourced enough ourselves to begin the long road to adulthood by figuring out how to meet our own needs.
This has become my lately developed criterion for the journey from infancy to adulthood. Learn to meet your own needs. Learn to let go of expectations of others. And certainly, learn to recognize that the Universe is not constituted around making you happy. That is your job.
Added to this is the issue of morals and ethics. It is for another newsletter (maybe) that I will research the history of ethics and morals, but I already know it’s complex. Because from these notions of right and wrong come further expectations. We are taught (and different cultures teach different versions – added trickiness) how “one should behave”. Fitting in with this gets approval, rebelling against your cultural moral code gets all sorts of nasty reactions, with disapproval probably being the least nasty.
If we choose the comply pathway, we are likely to get very disappointed, angry, frightened or sad when others don’t behave in the way we expect them to, namely the way we have done in order to be accepted and to fit in. If we choose to rebel we have to find the other misfits and form a club with them. I would have thought those people would be having an easier time of it, having a jolly old shindig with their fellow miscreants, but in many historical examples they seem to turn out hooked on poisonous substances and die early, painful deaths. I guess that’s one way to avoid this tricky issue.
A more healthy way forward, it seems to me, is that we explore the following possibilities:
Expectations come from needs
Learn to recognize your own, and figure out ways to meet them that do not require others to read your mind
Whenever you slip up on this plan, and end up upset, be ok with that. It is, after all, natural, and perfectly fine to be upset
Accepting upset as natural might lead you towards a learning journey of how to soothe yourself healthfully (i.e not with addictive substances or driven behaviour)
Learning how to soothe yourself will automatically make you very good at recognizing your needs and learning how to meet them.
If you get good at all of the above, and if the planet can withstand more humans, you are good to go for having a baby or two. They will be very lucky to have you as a parent.
You and your babies will be very good at loving.
PS The above list is a note to myself more than anyone else. Added to it is ‘get good at apologizing’, which is something I do often with my own children for not having gotten to this sooner.
This comes from my brave heart to yours...
With love,
Trisha Lord
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