Hope and Expectations: Dirty Words?

Well, they're not supposed to be.

But can they be?

Let's unpack this and see where it lands. A certain percentage of kids are growing up in a country that may be at war, or unable to lift itself out of poverty, and hope is of short supply there. If there is a ray of hope, they'll hang onto it, and they should, and you should help them do it.

Another percentage are growing up in a land of plenty and they may be told they can do whatever they want to and get wherever they choose. That could happen, sure. But can it also set the stage for unrealistic expectations?

Say your child tells you he/she wants to be a physicist. You can steer that child in the right direction in all sorts of ways and help him or her get into schools that make this dream into a reality. In that case, expectations would be mostly realistic.

Say your child tells you he or she wants to act in movies and become a big star. You can be helpful in getting the child training and so on; but a lot is going to depend on luck and the people your child meets along the way. There's all kinds of things that can derail that ambition.

Hope and expectations here can be treacherous. You don't want to derail your child from the ambition, because that isn't going to work. But you may want to temper the expectations and tell them that, while you are behind them 100%, there is a lot in the profession that can't be predicted and all they can do is the best they can without the expectation of becoming a star.

Are there other things they want that they can have? What's realistic for someone going in to the entertainment profession to want? What will they need to do while they are trying to make their way -- and will they have the strength to do it?

All questions you may want to ask them -- and at the same time, ask them to think about what they will do if stardom doesn't happen, just as an acting exercise. What will make them happy? Because that's a reasonable question, and it won't cost anything to answer.

My friend Irene O'Garden told me once that she realized she was working way too hard to be happy, and that she finally realized it wasn't a destination, but somewhere she already was. I loved that and tried (with uneven success) to live that way, but always felt it could be true if I was able to manage my expectations. Irene's new book Risking the Rapids: How My Wilderness Adventure Healed My Childhood has inspired me again about a lot of this happiness stuff; so I thought I'd share it with you.

So, yes, hope and expectations, by all means. But maybe we (I) also need to take a look at who we are, wherever we wind up. And figure out how great that can be if we let it be.


Meditating Boy: NCVO London


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