There is a lot about London I did not expect.
The size of my dorm room, the cost of living I didn’t realize would be so high, the weird water pressure in the shower. More serious things, too, like the loneliness you inevitably feel when you move to a new country alone.
I’m guilty of building up expectations and then being upset when they go unfulfilled. Sometimes we muddle expectations with fact; we are so convinced by the assumptions we’ve made that we forget they can be so easily crumpled.
College is often the breeding ground for cultivating an expectancy for the expected. We have our routines; we wake up, we go to class, we do our homework, we use our two minutes of free time a day wisely, and then we do it all over again. In the day-to-day of college and work, there aren’t really significant moments of unexpected.
It’s during major transitions — the new year, a new semester, studying abroad — that we amp up our expectancies for the future. And while goals are important, they sometimes evaporate in the space between the stellar expectations we set for ourselves and the reality that often plays out.
It’s not that the reality which differs from our expectations is necessarily good or bad — it’s just different. It’s the confrontation of the two — expectations versus reality — that usually does us in.
When we see that the expectations we’ve been building up in our heads don’t match up with what is, we tend to react with anger, or crippling disappointment or bitterness toward the situation.
All I can really say to this is… don’t. It’s easier said than done. But as we’re all gearing up for new seasons in life, it’s my hope that we can continue to dream for our futures without believing there’s only one way to get them that is built on our own fragile expectations. Usually, there’s something even better waiting to play out than what we could think up.
I know I wasted my first few days abroad angry that the minute details I had drafted up in my mind weren’t all accurate. It’s hard to appreciate a new situation for what it is when we’re too busy comparing it to what we thought it would be.
