Great Expectations

As my friend mentioned, that "Somehow the people we love the most, we end up hurting them the most". And as a corollary if I may add, we tend to have the maximum expectations from the people we love.

I have been told and have realised that expectations is at the root of many a human miseries. You do something for someone, and then you start expecting something from the other person. If I sacrificed something for you, so should you and if you dont I get hurt.

I had a personal experience which made me realise that, the more I like someone more are my expectations and more I put myself at the risk of being hurt. 3 of my friends were to go for a movie. Of the 3 of us, 2 of us were good friends, close friends if I may put it and the 3rd person was a casual acquaintance.
On the day we were scheduled to go for the movie, it so happened that both my friends couldnt accompany me for the movie, both of them had some work to do. As a result I was left all by myself to go watch a movie. It was an SRK movie, so I had to go for it, there was no choice. But I was hurt by their last minute refusal. However I was more hurt by my friend's refusal than that of my casual acquaintance. Both had refused to come for the movie at the last minute, both had committed the same action, but I was more hurt by one and less by one. That day at dinner time, my behaviour was the same with my casual acquaintance but there was a cold war that ensued with my friend which took a few days to cool off !

That made me realise that at times, the closer we are to some people, the more we expect and are prone to hurt, similarly, the closer we are to some people, more we burden them with our expectations. Whereas it should be the other way round, we should be forgiving towards the people we love.

Since then I have tried to not burden my close family with my high expectations, but I still have a very long distance to travel.