The Enemy Is Expectation
Book VII of Meditations finds Marcus Aurelius reminding us of the futility of anger toward external events, "for they do not care." In other words, life is indifferent toward us.
Often found at the root of frustration is expectation. We expected to be at a certain place by this point. We expected a specific response (or one at all). We expected one decision to make everything else fall into place. What life's indifference tells us is that we must be consistent in our own pursuit of contentment, recognizing that the biggest decision is the commitment to making several decisions, day in and day out, in service of who we aim to be.
"I am the decisive element," poet and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote. "It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous."
Where expectation looms and threatens, agency is the antidote. We quell the pain of expectation by choosing to be our own benefactor, usefully aware that matters not guaranteed should not be expected.
Life does not promise ease, comfort, or that others will follow through, nor does it promise that factors of environmental and relational variability won't challenge our best-laid plans. Instead, the inevitability of any possibility demands that we be the sturdy element—the decisive element.
The enemy is expectation; sufficiency is our response.
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