In The Beginning.....

It seems like an awesome responsibility, writing a blog. There are readers out there with expectations, after all. Maybe that is a good place to begin. The whole concept of expectation. We have become a society that is driven by expectation. We expect that certain things will happen to us at certain points in our lives. We will live in a family unit that treats us in a certain way. We will go to a school that has an entire set of expectations that we must fulfill to graduate. Then we get a job - more expectations. Find a life partner - expectations piled higher and deeper! STOP! Is there no end to this cycle? No wonder we are all feeling the impact of stress and seeking relief from the symptoms in drugs and alcohol. Expectation easily leads to disappointment. Is there a better way? Let's examine the difference between hope and expectation and the emotional investment you make in each of these. When you hope for something, you are cherishing a desire for something with anticipation of it happening - you don't know if it will or it won't. There is an element of uncertainty that you accept as part of the whole deal. You don't have your heart set on it happening, because you realize that there's a good chance that it won't. But when you expect something, you are regarding it as being likely to happen. So you do start investing your emotions in it, and this is where you set yourself up for disappointment, because the reality of the situation is this: things either will happen or they won't. You've got to prepare yourself, emotionally, for the fact that what you want to happen, may not. And that is why it is so much better to hope for things than to expect them. Hope leaves your options open and protects your fragile heart from life's rougher moments. So dear readers, I hope you will stop by and read my blogs from time to time. I will not stick to any one topic. You'll see everything from political rants to esoterica covered here. It just depends on what I feel like discussing at the time or what I have read on a given day that has stimulated my own thoughts that I'd like to share with you. So please don't expect anything in particular. I hope to generate discussion or at least make you think about how things are going in your own lives by sharing how things are going in mine. So until next time, be well & stay safe!