Why do humans have expectations ? Expectations are bad in the sense that when they are not met, disappointment and frustration takes over. I think the root cause of expectation is emotional attachment, which could be with another person, a movie, book or anything for that matter. The level of expectation also plays a role in how much pain we experience. Low expectations can be met more often than higher level ones. Let us take an average movie, say a 0.5 rating, if the movie has been hyped and advertised on a grand scale, our mind is already biased towards the higher end, say 0.7.
So if the movie is not to our liking, say only 0.2, the difference between our mind's bias and the reality increases, and so does our frustration. But if our mind was neutral, or even better, had a lower expectation, we would not be disappointed, and hence no pain or sadness.
So is it better to be pessimistic and expect failure all the time ? Well, one can argue against that by quoting Paulo Coelho from The Alchemist “When you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true.”
But then again, we have to be practical and expect only those events that have at least a 50% chance of happening to us. I cannot want to marry Brad Pitt and hope that the universe will help me achieve that. I would only be foolish if I do that. But I can expect to get a decent internship in a good company, which is being optimistic. There is a very thin line between optimism and foolishness, which we should identify and not cross. Similarly there is another thin line between low expectations and pessimism. Expecting a low grade in a course is very much different from being sure of failing in a course. If I keep saying to myself that I will fail the course, it may actually happen, because each time I am demotivating myself.
So the ideal frame of mind should be neutral. Unfortunately, reaching and maintaining that state of mind is quite difficult. If a person succeeds in that task, he/she would be the happiest and most peaceful person in the world.
On a side note, I have actually experienced the concept of universe-conspiring-to-help-you. When I applied to graduate school, I somehow had this intuition or confidence that I would get an admit into UCSD. I had this feeling that I already had an admit, and strongly believed that I would come to San Diego. I was actually telling people that I ll surely go to UCSD for graduate school. Maybe the universe reflected back all the positive signals I was sending out, and that actually increased the overall strength. Ah! metaphysics is such an interesting subject.. but in another post.
