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Expectations and Hopes

Recently in class we wandered into an interesting discussion that I have continued to ponder.  We were talking about the future.  I noticed how the students moved back and forth between talking about expectations and about hopes.  I asked if they were the same thing.  Most folks did not think they were the same.  So if not the same, how are they different? 

I agree; I don’t think they are synonyms.  Obviously, both hope and expectations have to do with the future.  Neither have happened yet.  I am sure I have not fully thought my way into the two dimensions of future, but here is where I am in the moment.  Let’s start with expectations.  I know our word, expectation, is rooted in Latin.  The root word is specto or spectare.  I would translate it as “watching” or “seeing.”  We get our English word, spectacle, from that Latin root.  So, the root word suggests expectations are our way of watching or looking out for the future. 

The two letters on the front of the word, “ex,” is a preposition.  Basically, it means “from” or “out of.”  Combined in our English word, expectation, is our way describing what we see coming from the future.  Perhaps I am going beyond the core meaning of the word, but for me expectations indicate something fairly specific or concrete from the future.  It tends not to be general or amorphous.  Hence, I can say of my students that I expect them to come to class prepared for a discussion.  This implies they actually should read the assignment.  

To put it into my real life, I realize I have all kinds of expectations.  For example, when I go to see my physician, I have expectations.  I have expectations that she will take care of me, etc.  I also have some expectations about my health.  If I have been routinely dieting, I expect that I will have lost weight.  Thinking a little further into the matter, I realize that expectations are not always our friend. 

I realize that I can have expectations that things will not go well.  I can expect that bad things will happen.  Again, to use the dieting example, if I have not been regular in my dieting---I have been sloppy and too lax---I can rightly expect that I will not have lost much weight.  Of course, this would be realistic.  Sometimes we know how we have been acting and those actions set up expectations that can predictably be pretty accurate.  If I don’t study, I expect to have trouble on the exam.  It all makes sense. 

When I shift to the world of hope, I believe things are different.  In the first place, unless I am crazy, I realize people do not hope for bad things.  I never hope for cancer to come or to get in a car wreck or my kids fail in their endeavor.  For me, hope is always positive. That why we say folks are “hopeful.”  So, expectations can go either way: good or bad.  But hope is always hope for the good.  I recognize it is hope; it might not come to pass.  But I am hopeful. 

The second thing about hope is I have no sense of control whether it happens.  There may be good evidence that my hope is well-founded and the likelihood of what I hope for will happen.  But there is no sense of controlling it or making it happen.  Expectations, on the other hand, can be controlling.  Parents often use expectations to control how their kids think or behave.  A parent might share her hopes for the kid and, then, load the situation such that the kid really has no choice but to act in the way the parent “expects.”  As a parent, however, I knew I could communicate to my girls what I hoped from them, but they knew I did not control the situation.  Whether my hopes came true was entirely in their hands. 

This becomes a spiritual issue for me, too.  It is surely the case that hope plays a key role in spiritual traditions.  I know well that hope is one of the classical virtues.  Many of us know the Apostle Paul’s summary in the great 13th chapter of I Corinthians: “faith, hope and love, these three…”  A part of my journey with God is a journey of hope.  And much of the journey of faith on earth is a journey of hope in my community and in the capabilities of all the people on earth.  But I shift language.  I have hopes in my community and all the folks on earth, but I don’t expect perfection.  I don’t expect perfection from others, because I know I am not perfect.   

From all this musing, here is what I am learning.  I would say cultivate hope.  Find ways to see God in the happenings of the day and have hopes that God and all God’s people are making the world a better place.  What we hope for has to be possible.  Some of what we hope for is quite realistic.  I actually think it is realistic to hope that God somehow will make a new heaven and new earth, as the last book of the New Testament talks about. 

I have hopes in my fellow human beings.  But I am realistic enough not to expect everyone to be aligned and working for peace and justice all the time.  I expect that humans will sometimes fail, ask for forgiveness and, hopefully, be restored in a way that makes the better.  I try not to expect the worst.  By and large, I believe we have a real choice in whether to be optimistic or pessimistic.  

Bottom line: try to moderate, or eliminate, expectations.  Cultivate hope! 

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