Downward Facing Blog

What to Expect When You’re Expecting

No, this isn’t some diatribe on the thoughts, emotions, and studies of the changing female form associated with becoming a new mother, but rather how our expectations prepare us for disappointment. An anecdote:

Once upon a time, I was in a relationship. An amazing relationship, filled with passion and respect and friendship. The feelings I had for him I had never before experienced—I saw my future with him: Married, with children. I know a lot of girls out there get carried away with these types of fantasies, dreaming about their wedding day from the age of 7, deciding on names for the 3 kids they would one day have years before puberty would strike. I was not one of these girls. Never had I ever dreamt about getting married. Never had I ever wanted kids. Until him. And I was convinced I wasn’t dreaming when these visions came to me, that I was merely seeing what would unfold with him in time. In him, I thought I had found my lobster.

Alas, that relationship didn’t work out. Things got rough, but in my romanticized fantasy, our bond was too strong to let anything tear us apart. But fantasies aren’t real. Not that they are bad to have, not that we should avoid them. But they enable expectations. And when things don’t go the way we want, it’s because we had expectations that it hurts even more because we let ourselves get carried away into a future that hasn’t happened, a place we won’t arrive at the way we thought we would. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY anyone can live up to our expectations in the exact way we envision or plan them. We can’t know what or exactly HOW something will happen because everything is constantly changing. I expected him to act a certain way, expected him to do things differently, expected the universe to let me have my way, and when things didn’t turn out as I had hoped they would, well, it hurt. A lot.

It’s expectation that causes so much pain and suffering. We have to surrender our expectations. EXPECT NOTHING. Then there is no way to be disappointed about the outcome of a situation. We can’t know how our stories will unfold, but therein lies the EXCITEMENT of life. Everything is a SURPRISE. And isn’t that more beautiful than trying to live life by some plan, some syllabus, a blueprint? Of course, there will be good surprises and bad surprises, but that is part of what makes up life. You can’t have the good without the bad.

There is no instruction manual for life. We all just make it up as we go along because everyone’s life is different. We all take different paths. Paths that have no road maps. It is in this light that I can appreciate what that relationship awakened in me: the realization that I do, in fact, want a partner and a family. I can’t know how or if it will come to me, but I can make the effort to be present in each and every moment and accept what is and, with gratitude, appreciate all of my experiences—which may or may not lead me to a husband and 2.5 children. It’s taken me a while to realize this, but, though that relationship caused me great pain, it also brought me a lot of happiness. And I’ll always be able to look back on all the amazing moments we had, which still have the power to make me smile.

The Bhagavad Gita with Geshe Michael Roach, Part 1

To say that I’ve been busy lately is an understatement. I’ve been going so fast, I fear my head might spin off my body—or spontaneous combustion. With life in the fast lane, I haven’t had much time to dedicate to my writing-for-the-fun-of-it. But I’m taking this course in NYC at Pure Yoga with Geshe Michael Roach and figured that if ever there were a time to write, it’s now, hoping to parlay whatever I pick up from the esteemed master of Buddhism unto you fine folks.

Geshe is in town to drop some knowledge on the sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita (read my interview with him for Yoga City here), which he took the time to retranslate. In case you’re unfamiliar with the text, here is a summary: Two extended families are going to war with each other. Arjuna, a great warrior, is facing the other army and he’s about to be asked to kill his own teachers and relatives. He calls on his chariot driver to take him between the lines of the battle that’s about to take place and he has a breakdown in the chariot, saying, “I can’t do it. I can’t fight.” Toward the end of the conversation between the two, the charioteer reveals himself as Krishna, a divine being, and reveals the source of the battle and the source of the universe.

The lesson to take away from this story is that once we understand how and why we attract the situations and people the make up our life, we can then plot our future and get the things we’ve always wanted, always dreamed about. Through karma marga—the path of karma, which involves four steps before, during, and after karma—Geshe says we can make anything happen that we desire.

The Bhagavad Gita is a story about right action, about figuring out what to do even when the situation is difficult. Arjuna’s dilemma: Show up to battle and fight, killing both his teacher and his relatives, or don’t fight and watch on as the two families attack and kill one another. The Gita, Geshe says, is a text we can use to discover a higher way to get the things we want in life, finding the right way to get them.

The first thing to do in discovering the path of our karma? Admit that you don’t understand. Now, don’t go getting defensive, just listen: The dreams you’ve been chasing all your life haven’t been fulfilled yet, have they? Well, you haven’t attained your dreams because everything you’ve been doing to reach them has failed. Even if you take an action and it sometimes produces the result you want, it’s still a wrong action—if it were right, it would work all the time.

Geshe said that we can all plant the dream we want, using a lonely woman wanting a boyfriend as an example, saying that the way to getting the things we want in life is to to the opposite (we’ve all heard that if we want more money in our life, we should start giving what we have away, right?). He advised this woman to start working in a nursing home to be a companion to someone else who is lonely, saying that if you don’t help or serve others, you will never see your dreams come true. The woman followed Geshe’s advice, and soon enough the woman met the man she would marry.

Geshe reiterated, though, that the growth of a thing/dream destroys the seed that is originally planted. What happens to the seed of a tree that grows to be over 100 feet tall, over 8 feet wide? No doubt it gets destroyed. All the seeds we plant have the capacity to grow bigger than we could ever imagine, but we have to keep planting them in order for us to maintain whatever it is we’ve been reaching for. And so the lonely woman in search of a partner needs to keep spending time with lonely people in order to keep her partner in the picture.

There are 4 steps to karma marga, and Geshe revealed the first step to us last night: Choose what you want. You have to start with one thing, one dream, and though you may have 4 or 5 or 12, he said that the path to one dream will no doubt affect and enable you to reach the others.

So decide what it is you really want in life, and I’ll get back to you tomorrow with more knowledge from the frontlines.