How to have a long and successful marriage

Simple - low expectations.

Celebrating 30 years

I know it is an old joke.
As yet I've  been unable to find a first literary quote but have seen a version attributed to Warren Buffet. Like all jokes there is an element of truth worth examining (hopefully without destroying the humour.)

A few years ago we were interested in improving the resilience of some of the pupils in our school and were looking at the ideas of the 'positive psychology' movement. Both myself and a colleague scored quite strongly as resilient on a self reported 'quiz' that offered. When we discussed why, it became clear that we both have quite low expectations about life generally. Now it would be very easy to fall into the trap of using such an outlook as a panacea - 'if you have low expectations you will never be disappointed and always be happy.' However, the intention here is to have a more rounded and nuanced view of the notion of expectations.

There is a intriguing story in Middle East Bedside Book edited by Tahir Shah about a pastry cook from Damascus who travels to China to master his art and subsequently to constantly improve his coconut sweets. His clientele increase and are appreciative but after a while sales fall, he is shunned and eventually he can't sell anything. He becomes ruined and ends up begging. In a caravanserai he meets three dervishes and asks them if they can explain the mystery of his ruination.
The oldest replied:
"Know that the appetite of the created being becomes insatiable. first he knows nothing, but still wants what he can get. This was the condition of your customers before there were any pastry-cooks at all on earth. Then, like your customers after they were offered the candies, they appreciate a taste of something and grow to expect it, and for it to improve. This, too, happened to you: and you fulfilled expectations. In the third stage, if no barriers of prudence are established, the created ones will allow expectations to run ahead of possibility. In your case, the people begin to want even better candies than it was possible to produce. the result of this was the working of a certain strange but inevitable law The appetite of the imagination actually made the people believe that your candies were getting worse, and that you were failing them.

When I read this story I saw so many echoes in everyday life: from well to do middle aged women shouting at counter staff over some inconvenience that the person had no influence over or responsibility for, to people publicly denigrating public services in the UK as 'third world standard' or conversely claiming that we deserved a 'world standard' (whatever that means) one. More lately, I see headlines such as Each generation should be better off than their parents? Think again (Larry Elliot the Guardian, Sunday 14th February 2016).Larry states confidently that perpetual progress has been at the heart of western society for the last 150 years or more but at least acknowledges that the dream is now dead. 

I have no wish to belittle the difficulties that our younger citizens face but I do have to question the possibility of some of the assumptions behind these words : what do we really mean by 'progress' and 'better off' and what are the practical constraints that could limit us?If the better off means greater wealth, is that truly achievable given our human and natural resources? If you apply logic to its limit does that mean everybody in some far future generation in the UK will all live in palaces undreamed  of by the inhabitants of Beverly Hills 90210?

A man I find extremely interesting called Stephen Jenkinson looks at these unwritten assumptions in his website Orphan Wisdom.

The Book of Supposed To underwrites the moral order of our days here in the dominant culture of North America, such as it is. Unlike my own practice, the Book of Supposed To doesn’t waste time describing things as they are, but goes directly to what you could call the mandate of heaven, the ‘how it all must be if anything or anyone half way decent is in charge’. Here’s the surprise: This minor book of mine seems to exert a kind of provocative, lunar draw upon that larger tome that I neither conjured nor anticipated. As the various moons do to the maternal orbs around which they hover, so Die Wise seems to prompt the Book of Supposed To. I have found that when I begin to talk about dying, about what has become of it in our time, the tolerance for any faithful witness to it isn’t broad or indulgent. I can tell the intolerance is out there, because at every gathering allegedly devoted to the project of articulating an orphan wisdom of dying I am asked instead to elaborate from the Book, to finger the bad guys and reward the good guys, to come across with the blueprint for what we deserve, to open up the current arrangement to all these ‘rights’ – to be pain-free, suffering-free, burden-free, awareness-free, death-free – that the Book of Supposed To carves out for us. Some of the more popular claims​:

‘Kids aren’t supposed to die.’

‘I am supposed to get to vote on anything that concerns me.’
‘It’s not supposed to hurt.’
‘I’m supposed to be okay.’
‘You’re supposed to live as if you’re dying.’
‘It’s my life and I’ll do what I want.’
‘I’m supposed to be able to die how and when I want.’

Now Stephen is talking mainly about death and bereavement but I am sure you could add your own broader claims to the list. As we are describing the nebulous social nature of some of our expectations, an examination of where they come from and on what basis are they 'what we deserve' seems useful as well  as considering the possibility of practical fulfilment of expectations  

Current scientific research doesn't seem entirely clear as to what degree our expectations are unconsciously established (classic conditioning) or expectancy involving explicit awareness but anecdotal reports I have read would suggest both mechanisms are at play to varying degrees over our life. If so certain experiences as well as self examination may be needed to tease out where our expectations have arisen. 

Clearly there are times when we enjoy a sense of expectation equally there will be times when expectations can engender very negative feelings.

The examples discussed above have perhaps focussed on unreasonably high expectations Low expectations can be problematic too in certain contexts. For instance several studies have shown that students tend to score lower on IQ tests when teachers expect them to perform poorly. We have probably all seen examples of adults passing on their pessimism to children - 'I was rubbish at maths too'.

So examining our expectations (high or low) could be a useful start.  Where do they come from? (Are they self imposed?)
What do we really mean and what are the real constraints?