Looking Back to 2006: The Stress of Expectations

The Stress of Expectations
Original post date: August 24, 2006

When I started TRT in late January 05, my expectation was that I would contribute an entry on most days. I met this expectation for the first few months. I then stepped away from everyday writing for about six weeks and then resumed my old frequency of writing.

Of course, as this marks my first entry in over one month, it's obvious my expected frequency has again fallen off. When I went through my first down period, it caused a lot of stress. I actually felt guilty for not writing daily. I knew that I had a regular readership and I felt that I was letting people down.

This time around there is no guilt.

One of the key lessons in Taoism is to give of ourselves WITHOUT expecting any particular outcome for it is our expectations that most often cause stress in our lives. We perform some act and then expect a particular reaction. Since we cannot know if this expectation will be met -- and most often they aren't -- we are setting ourselves up for pain and suffering.

It's a difficult lesson to incorporate into any human life because expectations seem to be part and parcel of the human psyche. We're socialized to EXPECT.

Still, if we can teach ourselves to undo this lesson, then life becomes a lot less stressful.

So, here sits my blog stripped clean of any expectation. There may be times I write a lot and there may times when I write nothing in this space. This blog is like a river -- sometimes the water is placid and sometimes the water will flow like a torrent.

I am content to let the words flow of their own accord without any expectation of when or where they MIGHT flow.

To read the intro to this retrospective series of posts, go here.