Around the world, the number one thing that correlates with happiness is realistic expectations. This, according to an interview with author Mary Pipher about her vital new book Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age. Listening to that interview, I had two thoughts in quick succession: 1) that sounds right to me and 2) how totally depressing.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I find it infinitely easier to toggle between extremes, between violently high expectations for myself and others and, like, absolutely no, zero, zilch expectations. Both, I think, serve a similar purpose: to protect me from the imperfection of connection. But both, also, have a similar shadow; they keep me from embracing my own life—and not the idea of my life I’m obnoxiously intent on cultivating but my actual life, the one that is obnoxiously intent on cultivating me.
My middle kid and I just wrapped up a ten-week, virtual therapy group for adoptive families. There was much to love about it: the dedicated space to talk specifics about our gains and griefs, the coping skills to build tolerance for general asshattery and ambiguity, the weekly “prizes”—Grub Hub gift cards for the parents, a grab bag of stress relievers for the kids. When asked what she’d miss most about the group, Middle said confidently, if not cheekily, “Oh, definitely, the prizes.” But what I’ll miss most is the regular invitation to kinder expectations.
Families of all sorts come teeming with expectations, especially here in America where we’ve turned a certain kind of family (“traditional,” manageable, congenial) into evidence of divine blessing or personal virtue. Maybe we expected our family would look like the one we grew up with. Maybe we expected our family would be able to enjoy each other for longer than a hot 24-hours. I expected our foster-to-adopt family would always feel subversively, charmingly “untraditional.” Instead, most days, we are quietly basic. We eat Ramen. We watch The Voice. We like each other, and we don’t sometimes.
Next week our family will be celebrating Thanksgiving with a not-so-basic trip to the Pacific Northwest where my beloved brother and sister-in-law live. Sitting beside Rush in the tub—a bath bomb explosion between us—I told him we should talk expectations. Like, let’s not expect to visit the Space Needle after a five-hour flight. Or, like, let’s expect we’ll want some adult-only time. “But most of all?” I said, stretching my greasy legs out over his, “Let’s expect to just savor Charlie and Jenny.”
Loves, I used to think that realistic expectations meant low expectations. It meant giving up on the hope of growth. It meant settling for less than full potential. But now, after my therapy (re)group, I wonder if the recipe for happiness is not low expectations but slow expectations. To pare down your holiday menu. To simmer on your ingredients at hand. To trust the steady burn of Time and Tending.
But most of all?
May you expect to savor your own life.
Your obnoxiously real and radiant life.
XO,
Erin
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