Expectations

This last week has certainly been an interesting one. I had my audition for "Glass Menagerie" on Monday evening, and though he wasn't helping direct the play at all, my acting instructor did sit in on them. I walked out of the auditions about two hours after they started and felt like they were atrocious, and vowed to actually research the play next time, rather than going in completely blind. However, when I connected with my acting instructor prior to class on Wednesday, he said there was little I could've done better, and that I just simply wasn't what the director was looking for.

Fair enough. I know I went into the audition telling myself not to expect anything. My first audition, no prior stage experience, I couldn't imagine that I'd be a serious contender for either of the male roles. Yet, walking out I couldn't help but feel pretty let down with myself. I got too nervous, I got too anxious, and so I spent my night afterwards in my apartment, eating ice cream and playing the Myst game on my iPhone. Silly expectations, showing up even when you don't want them to.

Also, this week marks the end of my commitment to my retail store. We had been hurting on one of our sales scores for a while, and so I proposed that if we finished this week at our minimum goal, I'd dye my mop of hair green. Well, not only have we made our goal for the week, but we made it with two days to spare. So now I have to look into green hair color and go through two days at work looking like a walking piece of broccoli. Joy.

And I expected the store to just miss the goal.

And finally, just a few nights ago, one of my friends and coworkers had the unfortunate experience of being broken up with. While I never really spoke with her about her relationship, I could tell that it made her happier than anything, simply by the way she acted and spoke. And now that was gone, and she was forced to face the world once again, her perspective now soured, though hopefully just temporarily, by the experience.

Expectations can be a terrible thing. They can get our hopes up only to have them dropped down once again. They can get us to over-commit to something that we're not terribly looking forward to. They can reveal mountains about our perception, both of ourselves and of those around us. Some people have been so affected by their expectations in the past that they have made a decision to simply not expect anything out of people or life in the future. That is a hard thing to do, and while I can understand the reasoning behind it, it pains me to hear people take such an outlook.

It's true, there's a lot of danger in expectations, but more than any danger, there are a lot of other things you can get from expectations. Confidence, optimism, and determination are all positive things that can result from expecting that you will do well on a specific task, expecting that someone else will follow through, or expecting that you will find happiness once again. I can't imagine going through life without at least some measure of confidence, both in myself and in others, and while my confidence certainly gets shaken from time to time, I definitely bounce back in short order. Especially when ice cream and Myst are involved.