How other’s expectations rub on us?

En quoi est l’encrier? -------- Il est en verre

En quoi est la clé? -------- Elle est en fer

En quoi est la robe? -------- Elle est en étoffe

The French class. All the students were listening carefully to the professor to get the pronunciation right (since I am currently pursuing my Post Graduate Diploma in Management – Retail and Marketing, French Language is one of the subjects). The students were later being asked to read out the previously done exercise, during which I too had the chance of displaying my newly acquired reading skills of a foreign language. That was the beginning of the process of expectation building of my professor on me. He was satisfied with what I had done. The later sessions of his lecture had only helped in strengthening his expectations of me. These series of sessions finally led to his open statement in the class in which he stated that people who could not get the pronunciation right could learn it from me as I was doing better than the others. This led to the formation of expectations of my classmates too that I was good at French. All this was good as I had been enjoying the adulation of others. But the French exam was a week away.

The day I started preparing for the exam, I was constantly saying to myself that I should study well and get the maximum marks because there are expectations of my performance by my professor, and my friends. I was preparing to live up to the expectations of others. Was it the Pygmalion Effect that was acting upon me? I am not complaining about this because I too had loved the results of confirming to their expectations which had helped me in writing my exam well. But what if people had expectations about me in a particular fashion, which I didn’t cherish to live up to? What if people had thought of me as person whom I don’t love to be?

That is when you become a slave to other’s expectations. I did not understand fully when my friend and philosopher, Madhav, had said, “Don’t make me a slave of your expectations”, until I experienced it for myself. We are constantly trying to live up to other’s expectations. Who said slavery had gone with bonded labor? Slavery is more of a mental process than physical. Slavery existed, is existing, and will continue to exist until we take a conscious decision of not being bogged down by other’s thoughts.

Expectation is nothing but the thought of a person of how he wants others to be. I am trying to live up, to the expectations of my parents, who expect me to have successful career, to the expectations of my friends who expect me to behave in a particular fashion. But if try not to do it and behave in any other manner other than the way in which they had expected, they say that I have changed. But what is constant in this world? Everything is dynamic. The thing which we consider our own, our body (which is not true) is changing, our thought processes have been changing and everything else is changing.

Are we not talking about what the Sriramsene had done in Mangalore recently? We are in fact questioning them about their authority to decide what they think people should do. Then how is an expectation of others by a person less than what these people had done?

What is freedom then? It is freedom from thoughts of yours and of others. But is it freedom of thought or freedom from thought. Freedom of thought is to have freedom to think what you want to. Freedom from thought is the state of thoughtlessness, NIRVANA.

P.S.: I am currently experiencing freedom of thought as I write this. Funnily my blog is titled “Thoughts With Viswasam” and I talk about freedom from thought. May be I am trying to live up to the expectations of myself about me.