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What to Expect
 Consider: What is the relationship between expectations and disappointments? Consider: What is the relationship between expectations and gratitude? Consider: What does the Torah say about one having expectations? Ever meet someone who has a closet full of disappointments about life, about their marriage, about their children? If you take a peek under the hood of a person’s disappointments you smell an engine full of unmet expectations. We’ve all had the experience of being disappointed. We don’t like it. For many people the answer to avoiding disappointments is to lower their expectations. “If I don’t expect much I won’t get disappointed,” sighs the disappointed expectant as they throw up their hands in despair and walk over to the sidelines of life. What are expectations? Expectations are our personal ideas about how our lives should work out. Sounds innocuous enough, however, much of the time, without our even knowing it, our expectations are built on a feeling of entitlement and feeling entitled runs in the crowd with being selfish, arrogant, and self centered, a motley and painful crew. What many of us don’t know is that there is entirely different experience of life available to us, a paradigm where expectations, disappointments, and entitlement often show up, and when the do come around, they are treated as uninvited guests. What does the Torah say about expectations? Nothing. Why? Because entitlement based expectations are ultimately are not about life, they are about the personal make-believe of our own egos. Something we all get caught up in from time to time but don’t have to entertain as having to do with the world at large rather having to do with what is between our ears. The Torah suggests that instead of lowering our expectations we raise our vision of what is possible, and in the place of feeling entitled to what we aspire for we feel grateful for any movement in that direction. That gratitude, says the Jewish sources, not only fills us with one of the most wonderful feelings available to us in this world, but also inspires us to be more deeply committed to our vision. When we feel grateful about our marriage we are inspired to be better spouses, when we feel entitled or discouraged about our marriages, it leads us to feel hopeless and skeptical. A person who has vision sees the beauty and promise of what is possible, a person who has expectations sees things coming to them. For me the whole world was created” says the Talmud, “This does not have to do with what is coming to you”, say the visionary Rabbis, “This has to do with each person’s ability to impact the entire world.” A person of vision doesn’t live in a world of expectations and disappointments, they live in a world of inspiration and gratitude, gratitude for movement towards their vision becoming a reality no matter how small. If disappointments leave a person feeling empty, gratitude fills a person with one of the most beautiful feels available to a human being. The most amazing thing about gratitude is the more one has it, the more one is inspired to do better at whatever is in front of them, be it working towards vision for changing the world, having a closer relationship or family, or something as simple as exercising more. Judaism is a vision for a different world, much of Jewish practice is pointing towards a life of gratitude. Every blessing, every prayer, every holiday, is another facet in the jewel of gratitude. Imagine a fork in the road, one street is poorly paved, without banks or meridians, and contains the same sparse scenery for miles and miles. The other street wanders through verdant meadows and hills, drives like a dream and stops off in the most wonderful and charming villages and vistas. One street is named “Expectations”, the other, “Gratitude”. You decide. Shabbat Shalom, Chaim Levine |