Expectations

“When your love is pure or spiritual, there is no demand, no expectation. There is only the sweetest feeling of spontaneous oneness with the human being or beings concerned.”

- Sri Chinmoy

Social anthropologists often describe many human relationships like a contract – we give our love to a person and at the same time we subconsciously place all kinds of expectations on that person which we want them to fulfill. And then when the other person fails to sufficiently satisfy our demands (which will definitely happen from time to time – we’re all imperfect) we feel let down and angry with the person, our insecurity and fear of not being loved come to the fore, and we often resort to some kind of emotional manipulation to try and get them to fulfill our demands.

True love, on the other hand is like the sun. The sun shines its rays and gives its warmth to all, without anything in return. This may sound like naivety, but when we live in the heart we feel exactly like the sun does – we just want spread our love and goodwill anywhere we can. With this kind of love we have detachment – we have no fixed ideas about what way this love should be taken by others, the mere act of giving love satisfies our heart immensely.

I know that I sometimes have difficulty with this – I think everyone does from time to time. It’s very difficult for me, as I am a person who bases all of my happiness on other people and their perception of me.  But, I believe if I work on not expecting so much from others and still loving, I will be a much happier person.