Week 47 - "The greatest obstacle to happiness is the expectation of too much happiness" – Bernard de Fontenelle
This week marked the end of my first semester of my sophomore year, and as I settled back home from school, I’ve spent a couple of days reflecting, and anticipating the upcoming weeks of break. During this period, i’ve noticed a interesting contrast between my expected feelings after an arduous semester, and how I actually felt.
I found myself feeling somewhat underwhelmed with my emotions, thinking I should be riding an all-time high after a difficult four months instead of just feeling ok about it. Upon deeper reflection, I realized that what I was experiencing wasn’t even directly related to school, bur rather to my expectations.
While I was sufficiently content with the semester’s end, I had anticipated feeling even happier than I ended up being. And because of that difference, I felt conflicted.
I’m not sure why I had such an high expectation for how I’d feel, but by doing so, I was setting myself up for disappointment. The excitement I would have normally experienced just felt flat, and it didn’t necessarily feel like there was anything I could do to change that.
Interestingly, that idea of our expectation of happiness applies to almost everything in our lives. For some reason, we think the things we do warrant a certain level of happiness for ourselves. We can think we don’t deserve any pleasure when we know we did something wrong, or think we deserve everything when we really don’t.
Part of me thinks that’s a result of learning from repeated behavior. From a very young age, when we win something or do something hard, we’re taught (rightfully so) that we can take pride in ourselves and allow ourselves to be happy. On the flip side, when we know we’ve done something we shouldn’t have, the hit to our pride is enough to make us upset.
I’m not here to say whether those learnings from youth are good or bad, but I will say that our baseline expectations of what we deserve dictate so much of our lives. And as a result, I think it’s vital to sometimes take a step back and really think about why we expect certain emotions, and how warranted those expectations are.
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