Expectations
Growing up,my favourite thing in the whole world was strawberries,I loved strawberries,they looked really beautiful in books where I had seen pictures of them,with the rich red colour and the tiny,dimpled indentations on them,then the oval shape.I spent time daydreaming about strawberries,I always imagined what they would taste like,pure heaven I imagined😀. Then I also realized that everything that is usually flavoured,ice-cream,biscuits,name it,the strawberry version of it always tastes exceptionally good so I ‘knew’ strawberries would take me to another planet,I grew up with this notion.
In 2013,here I was,heavily pregnant with Oba(my son)and I craved strawberries and kiwis,don’t ask me how you can crave what you have never eaten o😂😂😂I had taken kiwis on several occasions whenever I went on my ‘hustle’ abi na business trips but I didn’t even realize what they were as I always took them in smoothies. So I told my friend,Olufu,please on your way back from London,bring me kiwis and strawberries o,she obliged me, and the night I knew she was due to arrive Abuja,I was too excited to sleep,yay!Strawberries ooooo.So she sent the strawberries and I quickly rinsed them and popped one into my mouth,Lord!It felt like I had been slapped😨😨Ah,I couldn’t believe it,you know how that whitish or creamish vitamin C tastes?that one that slaps you in every corner of your mouth?ehnhen,that was exactly how it tasted,I spat it out and popped another,same thing😨My strawberry dream had been shattered😭😭😭.
Again,growing up,I used to read a lot,my father was one for books so he bought as many books as possible,bought me a dictionary and did exercises with me on reading and vocabulary as much as he could. By my early teenage years,I had graduated to romance novels,all the Mills and Boons,Harlequin,name it,I was reading a lot of books,not just romance,as I read ravenously. So in those books,especially the Mills and Boons,love and sex were magical,especially the sex,lightning,sparks and the whole works,so even though I read a lot of scientific and biological books and articles about how sex works and all that,I expected sex to be magical from the first time😒I was expecting everything,music,wine and the whole works,imagine my shock when my first time was painful,messy and I bled like a pig😱 Another thing about those books is the always tall,handsome and shining knight the heroine falls in love with,they are never short and pudgy,they are never bald and they never have dry skin😒So every teenage girl was looking forward to her dark,handsome,tall and perfect knight who smells like lilies every hour of the day,when in reality,she may be genuinely loved by a not so tall and chubby knight😍
You see,that is the thing about expectations,it is a two edged sword.While it helps to build excitement,enthusiasm and hope about things,it also has the downside of making one unreasonable,unrealistic and sometimes these result in serious disappointments and heartache. I still love strawberries but not in the way I had thought I would,I had imagined what it would be like so much and for so long that it fell woefully short of my expectations. For sex,I would say it could be magical if you work on it but it does not happen overnight and it takes time,patience,experience and some…erm what do I know about sex sef🏃.
Everything I have been trying to say since is captured in the quote by Mandy Haye “When you release expectations,you are free to enjoy things for what they are instead of what you think they should be”😊
Be Happy😀
Image culled from Pinterest
This is very apt. A lot of us have expectations and we even get to the point of being hypnotized. We need to equate reality with expectations…….
Yes and this in turn leads to desperation😊
Expectations can sometimes can take us to a disillusioned state where we are left with nothing but “disappointment ” and sometimes hopelessness. Let’s not dwell on them but try to strike a balance as to what may be or may not…that way we will not be taken by surprise!
True!There should be a balance between “hoping” and “expecting”,the two lines sometimes cross though😊