Expectations.

Another damp and earthy campervan morning. Heavy cloud and drying earth greets me and stillness once more. The light seems and feels dense, watery, blue and heavy on the eyes for some reason. Warmer than it has been, not a breath of wind to disturb leaf or branch. Far far off crow calls, a Robin in the ash and that’s about it. That said the Robin does appear to have a few answers coming back to it from around me. A squirrel in the top of the oak sending debris down onto the floor. A large skein of geese passes overhead. It’s been a geese year this year. Last year few if any passed over head and for some reason I expected the same again this year, however as the last few mornings unfolded, they have been full of intermittent flights of them honking over head, as they make their way south for the most part. A sensible if somewhat dark start to an early Saturday morning. It funny how expectations are met or dashed. The geese part of the last few days being an example. I have been reflecting over expectations over the last few weeks as situations arise. Expectations of my various roles and behaviour around them. Some of them mine, some of them cultural and societal and a lot of them other peoples and their ideals. Robert Jordon writes of one of his characters that :

“ He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.”

Over the last few days or so at times it’s felt like this. A deluge of expectations that have left me somewhat floundering at times. To the point where I have been journaling where these have come from. I came across this quote which kinda gave me some closure on some of those expectations. It comes from the meditation teacher Sri Chimmoy :

“ Peace begins When expectation ends.”

So there has been a sense of recognising these expectations, where they are rooted and pulling away from them so they don’t steer the course of my life and I do the steering. To become as Steinbeck wrote :

“ You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.”

Lovely days people.

“ I hope you do not let anyone else's expectations direct the course of your life.” Julianne Donaldson.