Disappointment

Remember when you were little and you would get excited over the tiniest things?  I remember not being able to go to sleep the day before the first day of school.  I imagined the adorable outfit I had picked out to wear with the perfect matching shoes.  My multicolored folders sat snugly in my backpack waiting to be filled with important documents.  I was sure to make at least ten new friends the next day on the playground, and maybe I would even have a teacher that took special interest in me like in that Matilda movie.  

Of course the next day would come.  I would spill milk on my brand new shirt at breakfast.  We wouldn't get any important papers at at school except for the pointless parent signature sheets.  I would hang out with my friends from the year before, quietly standing in the corner of the playground avoiding the monkey bars at all costs.  My teacher would just be your average Hilliard City School employee.  Except for my First Grade teacher, none really ever took interest in me.

This is a little cynical, yes there were those exciting days, those moments that completely lived up to their potential.  But if you think about it, when you're younger you have such high expectations and over the years they gradually lower and fall.  When I was little, if I didn't have a huge production of a birthday party I would be crushed.  Today I didn't really expect to do anything except go to church and sleep.  When I was little I would spend weeks making a list of all the things I wanted for my birthday, including a swimming pool in the backyard where I could train my pet dolphin.  I asked for a kitten this birthday and was overjoyed to actually receive that gift among many other nice things from my family.

The point is this;  as we grow older we begin to expect less so as to not be disappointed.  For me, I have learned that people aren't always reliable.  Just two years ago I would be crushed if I made plans for myself and friends and they would back out on me at the last minute.  I would think, "Well they must just not like me," or "I must not be worth their time."  So, I began to trust people less.  I expected less of them so that if they were to falter I wouldn't have my heart broken.  

I've found that I am important and I am worth peoples' time.  The people that matter the most to me are the ones that are willing to spend that time and keep their promises, and the ones that don't aren't really my friends.  I've gotten into the habit of expecting less, when I should expect nothing less than the best because when I do I become one of the unreliable, uncaring people.  I become careless and cynical.  Just because others have become hardened doesn't mean the  rest of us must follow suit.  So, I hope that when I stroll across the yard tomorrow to watch my girls for the day I give them the best day they could possible hope for.  Sure, the job might not be an internship with CASA or a 9-5 workday down at Balletmet, but its where I am and where I belong.  It would be wrong of me to disappoint the girls and why waste a perfectly wonderful day when I can be having fun right along with them?

“Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.”

Samuel Lover