Day 13: Lower Your Expectations

I’ve been told I have high expectations. I’m not sure how that can be true because every few months I need to change my vision, yet again, to something less bold, less grand, and in the case of my house, less organized, clean and quiet. When I first started working on connection building, I’ll admit, I had big plans for families so connected we always got along, and grand plans for a life full of people but without annoyances and frustrations.

Perhaps my expectations were a bit too high on that one. Think, for a moment, of the best community moment you can imagine. Kids playing, adults laughing, maybe some music playing in the background as everyone eats delicious food. Sounds pretty nice, right? Ok, now lower your expectations. Those kids are going to fight at some point and someone will definitely get hurt during that game of tag. They will annoy you for dessert approximately 100 times in the next 15 minutes. The grown ups are laughing but at some point someone will say something insensitive and someone will get annoyed. The music might work but maybe there’s tech issues and as for the food? Ok, maybe the food can taste good.

This is still a good community gathering. It’s just a real one. Part of being connected is allowing people to be their real selves and that means you get to see the tantrums and annoyances, you get to hear that person talk on and on about the job you don’t really understand and that is a good thing because they need to talk about it somewhere because it’s weighing on them and it doesn’t matter that you don’t get it. It can be hard for me (and maybe you) to let go of the ideal, but those seemingly less-than-perfect moments of community end up being the most meaningful of all.

What moments have failed your expectations but turned out to be true moments of connection?