Why is it that we as humans always seem to expect too much out of life? We expect people in our life to fulfill all our expectations, no matter how far fetched they may be. In the same way, we expect situations in life to work out just as we want them too, our careers have to get to the highest point, whatever business deals we get into have to turn out to be the ultimate success story!
Why do we instinctively set ourselves up to take a huge fall? Common sense and experience should have taught us by now that the odds of everything we touch turning to gold is abysmally minute.
But still, we hope, we dream and we put our hearts and our spirits out their in the firing line time after time.
Is it something in our genetic make up that makes us do that? Sometimes I think we humans are hard wired for hope. No matter how many times we get knocked down, no matter how long it takes for us to recover from the fall, we still seem to be able to muster the capacity to hope again and again.
There are times when I think that maybe it would be better to not have the capacity to hope. It would save us so much heartache and misery if we didn’t have the ability to generate a sense of optimism towards the future.
I mean, if we didn’t start the day thinking that things are going to work out just great, we wouldn’t be put in a position of being disappointed when something goes wrong ya?
Imagine if I were to start the day thinking that things are going to go horribly wrong for me somewhere down the line, that something bad is bound to happen to me during the day, I won’t be upset when I get a flat tire just as I need to be somewhere urgently. Makes sense doesn’t it? Why be upset, after all, I was expecting this to happen.
Now I can hear some people out there saying ‘but what if nothing bad happens?’. Well, if nothing bad happens and my day goes along as a very average one, that would be an emotional bonus for me ya? Instead of suffering the crushing sense of defeat, I would end the day on a happy note because things went better than I expected.
On the other hand, I’ve been doing some reading up on the whole subject of positive thinking and the huge effects it can have on your whole life and future. Everything I’ve read expounds the idea that being positive and optimistic can in turn generate good things in my life. It also says that if I’m negative and cynical about life, I will in turn, attract negative stuff into my life.
So, on one hand I have the option of being cynical, pessimistic and negative but never run the chance of being disappointed or I can be positive, optimistic and gung-ho but run the chance of being crushed when things go wrong.
Maybe, just maybe, life is all about reaching for that handful of stars, stretching ourselves to the breaking point to reach ever higher…
…Never knowing that the stars we’re reaching for are just reflections on the surface of a shallow pond, and just as we think we’ve made that final leap and grasped that fistful of stars, we slip and fall, ending up with a mouthful of mud.
TheKillRomeoProject 
June 18, 2010 at 6:10 am |
well if you can’t hope for a better tomorrow why live any longer? admit it. hope is the only thing that keeps you waking up in the morning – thats just how “hard wired” we are for it.
hope isn’t the enemy here 🙂 the negativity is. think about it.
July 5, 2010 at 5:19 am |
Being optimistic doesn’t necessarily run the chance of being crushed when things go wrong, does it? And on the other side of the coin, you might be disappointed if thing go wrong even when you know they will. Like when you know that Sri Lanka aren’t going to win the world cup, but still you feel shit when we don’t.
😉