"But a few leagues off the shore, I bit a flashing lure/and I assure you, it was not what it expected it to be!/I still taste its kiss, that dull hook in my lip/is a memory as useless as a rod without a reel"
'Messes of Men' - mewithoutYou
On Saturday it occured to me how much expectations shape my world.
Recently when Inception came out, I was super stoked to see it. Chris Nolan. Dreams. Ellen Page. Awesome looking advertisement. Big budget. This movie had so much goodness stacked in it's favour, but in the end, I wasn't impressed by it. I went into the theatre thinking about how amazing Memento and The Dark Knight were and thereby assuming that Nolan would continue his tradition of kicking up his movies into the next level while maintaing a relational believability in the characters actions and conversations. He certainly kicked it up to the next level, but as everyone associated in the making of the film was given their due in white fuzzy letters, I just felt an acute sense of disappointment. Leonardio DiCaprio's dialogue often felt forced, and his relationship with Ellen Page grows so randomly and sporadically that Ellen stays a very 2 dimensional character, even though her role calls for depth. All the action sequences (save for the amazing gravity-shifting hallways) were as cliched as some sort of cliche for being very cliched. The biggest letdown of all though was the whole concept. Entering and controlling dreams in order to extract or plant ideas is one of the most thought provoking premise' I've heard of in a while, and as the opening dialogue explained how it worked I was left salivating for it to be taken to each and every extreme. Rather, it remained rather bland. The sheer possibility of having stray imaginations bring in ANYTHING while still retaining believability is the ultimate gift for writers. Anything could have been done, but it rather remained rather un realistically real. The whole concept of nightmares wasn't touched on, and in the end the untapped possibility of it being pushed further left me feeling hollow.
All because I had expectations for it. If I had gone into the movie not knowing the director, the budget, the actors, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more.
Now, I'm not advocating not having faith in things, rather I'm pointing out how the expectations shaped my experience so much.
In a similar way, people's expectations of me seem to shape my actions far more than I realized.
I'm not fully sure how people view me entirely, but I do pick up on certain subtlities and I usually end up doing what people seem to expect of me.
I noticed this through contrast. Last week was my first real week of Grade 13, and it was supremely enjoyable. I spent the majority of each day in the art room working on my self-portrait (which the photo of doesn't seem to want to paste into this blog for whatever reason) and I didn't really have much human contact. When I did, I found myself to be quite a bit more pleasent and less sarcastic than I normally am. Come the weekend and youth retreat, and I caught myself being a jerk in every which direction. While trying to figure out the causation, I caught myself thinking "but it's so easy to do it here." And I realized that one of the reasons I said the things I did was because I could. People are used to me being crass and uncaring, so when I was, there was no reaction, no outrage. Whereas at school, people would be taken aback and shocked. I would quickly lose contact with people because of an offbeat sense of humour which really isn't that funny. I'm not blaming other people or their reactions for my problems or behaviours. Why they react doesn't matter, what matters is that I shouldn't be creating a cause for there to be no effect to.
Oddly enough, a few hours after having this train of thought, the youth pastor had a monologue about putting aside our expectations and allowing things to just be (or something to that affect). Likewise, what people expect me to do shouldn't be a factor for or against my actions. I shouldn't make extremely insightful yet cutting remarks because thats not mirroring Jesus' love. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, and it's excessively humbling to realize how lacking I am in so many of these catagories.
Now then, the flipside. Rather than focus on the victimized side, think about how your expectations shape the world around you. I recently had a rather heated conversation with a very good friend about how it's so much harder to change if no one expects you to. The particular person in question was some overly-obnoxious sounding boy on her res. floor, and she made the argument that he had had his chances and blown them, whereas I advocated that he be given infinite chances with the expectation that he'll eventually come around and come into his personhood.
I realize how far-fetched and idealistic it sounds, but if he realized that there was someone out there who was counting on him straightening up his act, he'd have a lot more motivation than people who just expected him to stagnate as a douchebag.
link to song from preface: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJFhXyd-F7Y
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