I have a bad habit of rehearsing experiences way before they happen. It’s always getting way too hyped about something, before meeting someone new I think about the possible ways the conversation could turn out. Before going to a new place, I have mentally planned out each single picture of the moments I will enjoy during the trip, as if I already knew they were going to be the best ones.
It is strange how most of us live in love with expectations. And when I speak of expectations, I don’t mean simply hoping that everything will be nice or good; rather, I mean always expecting things to turn out exactly as we imagined them. Yet, there is something that goes hand in hand with expectations: when they aren’t met, we often end up disappointed.
I have always believed that disappointment begins long before you realize something wasn’t what you expected; it starts the moment you begin imagining how something will be before you even encounter it. However I wonder how many disappointments in my life were real and how many were simply the difference between reality and the stories I told myself beforehand.
Four years ago, my parents gave me a trip to Europe with my friends as a gift for my 15th birthday. It was a trip organized by a company that took boys and girls from all over the city; everyone knew about it thanks to the photos on Instagram: outfits color coordinated by the day, shots at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, girls eating gelato, and photos in the Swiss snow where everyone looked happy and was laughing. A 21-day trip across Europe with your friends, meeting new people, and living the best summer of your life, the company representatives said when my parents asked.
For seven months leading up to the trip, I was already buying all my outfits, planning how I’d spend my money, thinking about the photos I’d take, and considering every detail. Coming from Barranquilla—a city where everyone is extremely social, myself included—I had high expectations for the social side of the trip: making tons of friends, getting along with everyone, and so on. Although that aspect excited me, it didn’t intimidate me much, as I’ve always considered myself a very social and likable person—something others confirmed as well.
Finally, the departure date arrived, and there we all were at the airport, coordinated in yellow. My friends and I were incredibly excited and, above all, ready to meet the people who would be our friends for the next three weeks.
As the days went by, we met more and more people; however, I felt like everyone else was clicking with one another.
That was when I started to see all the expectations I’d had for the trip actually come true, just as I’d imagined, except it wasn’t me living them out; it was everyone else.
I felt like everyone else was clicking with one another…except with me.
Watching my expectations crumble little by little led to a host of other issues: crying every night in my room, seeing many of my friends change their personalities, being labeled “bitter” by kids from other schools, and on top of it all, having to deal with problems back home from afar. And perhaps that was one of the first times I truly realized that reality doesn’t always disappoint us when it turns out worse than we imagined. But it can also disappoint us simply by being different.
In truth, reality hadn’t let me down. It was just that things weren’t unfolding exactly as I had rehearsed them in my mind months earlier. And that is how I gradually began to experience, more and more, what it’s like when your expectations don’t play out the way you hoped.
It happened again when I was on vacation with my family: instead of the trip of a lifetime, it turned into a fight that nearly led to my parents’ divorce. It happened again when, after being a top student, I started getting terrible grades. It happened every single time I imagined something beforehand and allowed my experience to hinge on how closely reality matched what I had envisioned.
And although many years have passed since I learned that things don’t work that way, I hadn’t thought about that lesson life taught me until today, when I walked into the New York Public Library. We had been told beforehand that the actual Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals would be on display. “Aww, I can’t wait to see them,” I had thought, especially my personal favorite character, piglet
When we reached the exhibit area and got close to the stuffed animals, I paused for a moment. There were the five of them: Pooh, as adorable as could be; Igor, looking a bit tired; Tigger, less radiant and bouncy than usual; Kanga; and… what was that? I wondered. Down below was a tiny stuffed animal that looked more like a small dead rat. Piglet. The piglet looked horrifying. But I had seen him on the internet before; I already knew what he looked like. Yet, I had still built up expectations and imagined the scene before it actually happened. And yet, even knowing what to expect, I was looking forward to the Piglet of my childhood—the one I saw in Disney movies: pink, sweet, so delicate and innocent. Instead, I found myself standing behind the glass, stifling a laugh born of disappointment and disbelief at how hideous the stuffed animal actually was, while listening to my companions laugh as well.
For a moment, I felt as though I were back on that journey. I felt that familiar disappointment slowly seeping into every part of me as reality once again refused to match the version I had played out in my mind. Yet, I remembered a lesson that had taken me three years to truly learn: the value of that worn-out stuffed animal wasn’t measured solely by its beauty or how closely it resembled the image in my head, but by the events that unfolded because of it and the lessons it taught others. Piglet and his friends filled an entire generation of children with stories and memories—children who loved characters that, in reality, bore little resemblance to the objects that inspired them.
Most of the time (at least in my case) the best and most important experiences of my life weren’t the ones that met my expectations. Instead, they were the ones that forced me to let go of the script I kept rehearsing in my mind and, above all, helped me see life in a different way.
During the final week of my trip to Europe, I began to look for the good things the journey had given me, even though it hadn’t gone according to my expectations or the script I’d imagined. I never would have expected that trip with my friends to be such an eye-opening experience, helping me realize so many things. My friends had changed; perhaps if things hadn’t unfolded the way they did, I would have changed too, and not for the better. If the trip had gone exactly as I’d hoped, who knows where I’d be today? If every expectation had played out just as I’d rehearsed it, I’d likely be living in an idealistic bubble. But above all, I think that if everything I imagined turned out exactly as I wanted, what would be the point of life? You wouldn’t be surprised at every step of the way or discover that it is precisely in those surprises or changes of plans. That the greatest opportunities arise: to improve, to move forward, or even to see things from a different perspective.
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