Bone China

It's been a horrible week, I must say. My phone got stolen (and I've lost all the damn contacts :-( ), one of my favourite football clubs got bought by a damned American (who seems to knows nothing abuot the game), Michael Schumacher had terrible luck in Spain, I had to have another operation on my leg and to top it all off, I got given work in my project after 4 perfectly ideal, jobless weeks.....

"I didn't expect this from you". What a line! What absolute callousness and lack of thought it reveals! Why should a person expect anything from anyone in any case? It is never your right to get something from the other person. You may ask, but the giving is upto the other person. It is this very "expectation" that is the destroyer of most things in this world. For it is a fact, that while we expect a lot, our estimation of our own obligations is never even close to our expectations.

I once mentioned in a post how we form impressions about people and get weirdly put off when they turn out to be different, even if this difference is not apparent at the surface. But what I am talking about now - the expectations I am talking about now - is not the same phenomenon I mentioned then. This is when, very literally, familiarity breeds contempt. You are so taken in by your own view of the person, that you fail to even realise that this person may have a mind of his or her own. All that matters for you now, is your own impression.

And when the deeds that are done go against the grain of the mental image you have built up, you feel that you are justified in being "disappointed" and in feeling "let down". While this invariably leads you to feel terrible and even angry about what has transpired, the much more important repercussion is on the relationship. It is destroyed, and as a very old friend had once remarked, "Relationships are like bone china cups. One broken, they may be repaired, but the cracks will remain forever."

It is not as if forming impressions per se is bad. It isn't. And even if it is, it is unavoidable. It is human nature and there's nothing you can do to stop it from happening, because most of the time it is a subconscious process. What we can do however, is to limit our expectations and also keep in mind the fact that we should not attempt to control that which is not ours; namely the thought process and the mind of someone else.

Try thinking about the last time someone told you that you had done something that they did not expect from you (in the negative sense, of course). Chances are that you yourself, felt that you hadn't done anything wrong, that the other person was being unreasonable and selfish.......try thinking of that the next time someone "lets you down".....it may just make a big difference to your life.

*These are thoughts that actually haunted my mind when I heard about someone who was told this very line.....someone that least deserved to have heard it.....