The Great Unlearning
Avoiding the Expectations Trap
Perched at the very top of the list of regrets of the dying is this:
I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, and not the life others expected of me.
This tops the list that Bronnie Ware, a caretaker at a palliative care center put together. She had the opportunity to get to know a multitude of patients facing terminal illness, and through her interactions with them, compiled a list of deathbed life regrets.
When I first learned of this list many years ago, I was so struck by it that I printed it out on a piece of paper and pasted it next to my monitor at work. I would stare at it multiple times a day, every day. My coworkers were worried that I had fallen into some depressive state, and some even offered counsel. I had to calmly assuage them that it was actually a motivational effort by me to prevent any of these regrets from cropping up in my head on my deathbed.
In fact, that piece of paper was the only constant between my jobs: every time I left a company, I would make sure to bring it with me so I could paste it next to the monitor given to me at my next company. Somehow, that wrinkled piece of paper symbolized all the years of effort I put into trying avert the regrets of the dying.
While #2 was a constant struggle, it was #1 - the top regret - that was the most pervasive because it was at the core of who we are and what we do.
There are multiple components of the top regret, but the most basic one is the one we will focus on, which is “the life others expect of us.” This seemingly innocuous statement is the crux of what will be discussed in this chapter. We will unpack the different strands that create these expectations so that we can identify, understand the implications, be aware of, and consciously unravel them in order to achieve a state of neutrality which is the ultimate goal of unlearning.
Expectations are lines in the sand that we use to measure how we have fared in our lives. They serve as goals to hit and as hurdles to jump over. An inability to attain them, and to do so within a certain timeframe is seen as a failure to only oneself, but to others as well.
And this brings forth a critical question we rarely ask ourselves: exactly who set up these expectations for our lives? Was it ourselves? Was it our families? Our friends? Or society in general?
The answer is: all of them. Together, they form a complex soup from which you yourself have sipped from to form what you think are your “own” expectations. Like the many layers of an onion, influences from various people - directly or indirectly - create a hierarchy of expectations that you constantly measure yourself against multiple times a day, every day, both consciously and subconsciously.
As the diagram above illustrates, there are varying layers of influence that generate our expectations. The outermost layer is society in general, and the culture it thrives on. It is comprised of people we don’t have relationships with, but have heard of either directly or indirectly in real life or through the digital realms. To put bluntly, they are all the “influencers” of varying degrees.
Underneath that is the layer of institutions. These organizations develop their own subset of cultures that we learn of and participate in through direct relationships with others. As such, the fidelity of influence is greater as it is more direct, palpable, and personal. Examples include our excursions in academic, religious, filial, and professional spheres.
At the core lies ourselves - both conscious and unconscious components of us. They represent our own thoughts and choices, even if some of it may be illusionary as discussed in the awareness article published earlier.
The Outer Ring and Background Echo: Society and Culture
To start, we must understand who are these “others” imposing their ideologies on us on what we “should” do.
We will begin in the coming articles with the furthest and most removed layer: society and culture. These are the broadest strokes of expectations that have evolved over time and are unique to different civilizations. They are also the most surreptitious.
➡️ Watch the accompanying YouTube video for this article here:
➡️ Read the previous FoFty manuscript article here:
