Today, if you ask everybody around you, "What do you want in life?", they will say a lot of things, like money, fame, cars, bungalows, and will have a lot of beautiful dreams to express. If you ask them, "Why do you want all of this?", I am quite sure the answer will be "For Being Happy In Life".

The primary focus of this write-up is not Happiness. It is 'Why we lack happiness'. Happiness is a long topic in itself.

We all want to be happy in life, no doubt. We may not say, "I want peace" as much as we may say, "I want happiness". Well, if we are having to say "I want happiness", it clearly indicates that there are times when we are not happy, and that is exactly when we say that we want to be happy in life. Have we ever sat back and analysed the reason behind our happiness lacking? If not, let us try to do it through this write-up.

All we need to do is sit back with ourself and try to find out why we are not happy. Just ask yourself right now, and the answer for most of us will be either "Someone is not behaving properly", or "Something is not happening the way it should". Well, this means someone is not behaving the way I had thought they would behave or something (that could be a small situation, incident, or life as whole) is not happening as per my thinking. This is expectation. Why so? It is because I am affected by the behaviour of the person/situation, which is aberrant from what I had perceived them to behave.

Some examples are as below:
- I wanted someone to not do something, but they did it. I am affected, because I had not expected them to do what they did.
- I loved someone, and I just wanted (i.e. expected) them to love me back OR at least accept my love OR at least just know that I love them
- I have let someone be the way they are in their life, so now, even they should let me be the way I am in my life i.e. somewhere internally I expect them to let me be the way I am
- I expect the climate to be convenient to the world (i.e. me)
- I expect the CD Player in my car to work
- I expect my boss to recognize my work, I expect the team to have better skills
- I expect a promotion, a hike in the salary. Oh no, I deserve it absolutely!

Well, all the above statements are just a few examples amongst the hundreds of expectations we have in a single day. Expectations could be from other human beings or even from things, as simple as a chair, a computer keyboard, or a handkerchief.

Let me clarify right here, the above statements are expectations only if you are affected by them. Not everybody will be affected if their handkerchief was not washed properly that morning. Not everyone will be sad if they do not get a salary hike. Not everyone will be upset if their loved ones do not reciprocate. Here, we are talking about the ones who are affected by the absence of all of this, which makes almost all of us :)

How beautiful our lives would be if the world would behave as per our thinking and everything in our life would happen as per our choice! Well, this is something that is never going to happen. Everything is going at its own pace in this world, and everyone is a separate individual, even if they are our children, our parents, or our dearest ones.

So, what is an expectation? It is predicting the future behaviour of a person or a situation. Since this is hypothetical and within our mind, it is seldom met, because other persons and situations are behaving at their own pace. The computer will boot up only at its own pace, and the traffic will only move at its own pace. Making efforts from our side to improve people and situations is one part, however, many times we just still keep expecting and cribbing.

So, is an expectation bad? Well, because it causes us pain, yes, it is. Pain is bad, isn't it?

We justify our expectations to a great extent and we are almost always convinced by them. However, in this process, we forget to respect the individuality of each person. This, in turn, affects our relationships with others, because our behaviour with them starts depending on whether or not they meet up to our expectations. Relationships are to give, but in expecting we stop giving, and thus do not share the positive energy we already have. The positive energy that we already have inside fluctuates depending upon the behaviour of the other person, and more importantly, it depends on whether that behaviour matches with the expectations we have with that person.

We think that other people, situations are under our control or at least that we can change them and improve them. In this process, we are trying to make the other people equal to us, which is, again, never possible, because everybody has a different set of beliefs, experiences and expectations from around them. Everybody's calibre is different and so is everybody's understanding. Definition of love, happiness, peace, for everybody is different. This difference can also exist amongst parents and children. However, when the parents expect their children to do what the parents think is right, it causes differences in opinions, which we term as 'communication gap'.

When it comes to our children, we can definitely nurture them and teach them good things right from their childhood. However, when we go into the mode of 'expectations', we often go into pain. All we can do is suggest them what is right or wrong as per our understanding. That may not necessarily be right or wrong as per their understanding. We cannot enforce this onto them, because that will only create a barrier in the love we have for them. Moreover, they will continue to do those "wrong things" behind our back, which is a part of disrespect, according to me.

The feeling of expectation is so subtle that some of us also expect from strangers, to behave courteously, manner-fully, and many times they do, but if they do not behave the way we subtly expected them to behave, we start feeling hollowness within ourselves. When people appreciate the new dresses we wear for the first few days, we feel outstanding, however, when they gradually stop appreciating, we gradually build up helplessness and sadness within.

We need to understand what is in our control. The only thing I understand that is in our control is our thinking, then comes our behaviour with others. Others are not in our control. They can never be. They will never be.

Irrespective of how others behave with us, do we not have the power to behave politely, friendly, and nicely? Of course, we do! What we don't have is patience to persevere these qualities. We take all relationships for granted and have so deep, hidden, and subtle expectations from everybody and everything around us that we have no margin to think about the way we are behaving with others. Are we meeting their expectations first? If no, then why should we also 'expect' anything from them? Well, there can never even be a stage when we meet all the expectations of others. So, that should not be our focus. This is because we will end up doing things that we may not be happy doing, and that will eventually be stated to them, which will simply erase all that we did for them.

There are innumerable situations when others don't behave the way we want them to behave or behave the way we don't want them to behave. However, asking them to do or not do something is not the solution. Nobody actually does anything unless and until they realize its worth.

So, does this mean we should be rude and bring about a dryness in our relationships? No, it certainly doesn't. What it means that our love for others should be unconditional and independent on their behaviour. Well, they may come to you and ask you to do something that you don't want to. Even if such an expectation they have from you does not shake your love for them, it is true love.

The whole world will continuously keep expecting things from you, no doubt. This is a never-ending process. What can be ended right now is your expectations from them, because they are giving you pain. Note that even wanting the world to not expect anything from you is an E-X-P-E-C-T-A-T-I-O-N :)

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