“Don't count your chickens before they are hatched.”
Aesop
Aesop made us aware of this well-known saying more than 2500 years ago, but do we heed his call? No, I don’t think so. We tend to spend our “salaries” before we have earned it. I think that we are very quick to create too high expectations, not thinking them through clearly, and when these expectations fail to materialize, we feel dejected.
This could have been prevented if we only practised better forethought. What we anticipate, seldom occurs; what we least expect, generally happens. Alice Walker was right in his poem: “Expect Nothing” when he said that we should expect nothing and live frugally on surprise. Ernest Renan saw life as maimed happiness, one of care and weariness, riddled with baseless expectations of a brighter tomorrow.
Eric Hoffer also said that disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy of the soul that spends too much in hope and expectation. Thomas Hardy thought that the sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar of such a magnitude which the ultimate fulfilment of that hope never entirely removes. Within the light of the above, I will quote the following, as food for thought:
“Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
May this be part of your daily philosophy!
I so much trust on the expectations which I create,
but only to find myself on the threshold of discontent…
Let us start with a clean slate
and not make expectations of that which we don’t know the end.
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