What were you expecting?

You are born, you are to behave appropriately but whatever you do is acceptable, cute and forgivable. You say your first word, ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ are the first words your parents expect you to say, but even if you say ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ you are the cutest little thing ever. You start school and you are expected to have good grades, to build up a normal social background, to adhere to the rules. Still it is ok if you mess up a few times, we forgive but never forget. Remember that time in elementary school you accidentally spilled water onto your pants and everyone thought you peed yourself? But once again, even things like that are expected to happen so it is still not a biggie, right?

High school comes and goes, you are expected not to go mental even though you are in your teen years, but, whatever you do is still acceptable, not approvable, just barely acceptable. You go through a lot of phases in this period of your life expected to find yourself immediately. Then comes college, you are your own free man, right? Wrong! You are expected to do everything on time, to not waste time and to finally understand the phrase time is money. You are to grow up, to know everything about life and to start on your own. But, soon, life hits, and it hits you hard. You graduate, you discover that life is as hard as it gets and that you haven’t the faintest idea what to do now. However, you are expected to know everything from scratch.

At each stage of our lives we are to fulfill norms and standards without ever being given an instruction on how to deal with life. But try to expect something from someone else, oh no you didn’t! You think that just because you managed to fill the shoes you were given that you have any rights to expect something in return, oh no no no. You are never too good to expect something back, well, at least that is what they keep telling us.

By the way, who is the man who keeps telling us to do something right or else? What if I don’t want to color inside the lines, what if I want to build something, what if I… endless possibilities. The only true expectation that we face as soon as we are born is whether to be the hero or the villain of Expectation city. If you want to be part of civilization and humankind then you have to be raised to be the perfect citizen, otherwise, you might become a great person. Of course there are certain norms we have to follow, but nobody can tell you what you can and can’t do.

Take the fruit of curiosity and bite it with courage, you are not meant to be a bleak copy of your predecessors, you were meant to do something great with your life.

By Dejan Vicai