Saturday, July 19, 2025
Home Emotional Wellness Expectation: The Invisible Enemy of Peace

Expectation: The Invisible Enemy of Peace

by Farhat Sakeena
2 comments
A solitary person looking out over a quiet landscape at sunset, symbolizing reflection, solitude, and emotional acceptance.

Sometimes the pain we feel doesn’t come from what someone did; it comes from what we believed they should have done. We expect love to be returned, kindness to be matched, presence to be steady, and understanding to come effortlessly. But when life doesn’t meet the version we quietly wrote in our minds, we’re left hurting, not because someone set out to hurt us, but because they didn’t fulfill the silent role we cast them in.

That’s the quiet tragedy of expectations. We rarely voice them, yet we build entire emotional homes on them. We believe people will value us the way we value them, show up for us the way we show up for them, and love us the way we need to be loved. But people aren’t mirrors. They don’t see the world through our lens. And when they don’t match the script we never gave them, it feels like betrayal, even when they never made us any promises.

As Haruki Murakami once wrote, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” The suffering usually begins when we hold on too tightly to the way we thought things were supposed to go. When someone doesn’t behave as we imagined, the space between expectation and reality becomes the very place where disappointment takes root.

Sometimes we raise the bar so high in our heads that no one can reach it. And when they fall short, we feel let down, even though they never agreed to what we silently hoped for. It’s like building castles in the sky and then feeling betrayed when they fall. But maybe they were never meant to hold weight in the first place.

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Especially in love, and maybe more so there than anywhere, we carry quiet hopes. We wait for a call, a gesture, a word. We believe it will come, simply because in our hearts, it should. But real love isn’t always loud. It’s not always obvious. Sometimes it’s quiet, even clumsy. Sometimes it’s awkward. And sometimes, it’s just not there at all, and that absence hurts even more because we expected something else.

As Rainer Maria Rilke once said, “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks.” He wasn’t wrong. We expect others to instinctively know how to care for us, to read between the lines, and to anticipate our needs. But the truth is, most people are just trying to figure themselves out. They don’t always catch what we hint at, and they don’t always love in the way we imagine.

And let’s face it, it’s easier to say “people hurt me” than to admit our illusions did. The thoughts that someone should have known, should have cared, and should have stayed are all beliefs we create. And often, we believe them so deeply that we confuse them with reality. But no one else agreed to those terms, and that’s the hard truth.

Still, there’s freedom in that truth. If our expectations are what hurt us, then maybe letting go of them is the first step toward peace.

There’s a quiet kind of strength in choosing to accept people for who they are, not who we hoped they’d be. Acceptance isn’t about putting up with mistreatment. It’s about letting go of the weight we put on others to live according to our internal stories. It’s about seeing them clearly, without the filter of “should.”

We sometimes expect people to just “get it.” We drop hints, hope they’ll read between the lines, and think they’ll know. But life isn’t a carefully directed movie, and most of us aren’t mind readers. It’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole; it just doesn’t work, no matter how much we want it to.

As Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, “All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” People are not just what they give or fail to give us. They are their own full stories. With fears, joys, scars, and dreams that often have nothing to do with us at all.

Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for them and ourselves is to take a step back. People may not show up how we want, but that doesn’t mean they’re trying to hurt us. They might be doing the best they can. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt can soften even the hardest edge of disappointment.

When we let go of expectations, we unlock a different kind of peace. We allow others to be fully themselves. And we permit ourselves to feel without being ruled by those feelings. We begin to love without strings, to give without keeping score, and to walk away when we need to, without bitterness or blame.

The Buddha once said, “You only lose what you cling to.” Maybe healing doesn’t come from holding on tighter, but from letting go with grace, with empathy, with open hands.

A solitary person looking out over a quiet landscape at sunset, symbolizing reflection, solitude, and emotional acceptance.

Maybe people don’t hurt us as much as we think. Maybe it’s the silent stories we tell ourselves about how they should have acted that leave the biggest bruises. And maybe, just maybe, healing starts when we stop expecting and start accepting.

Author Profile

Farhat Sakeena
Farhat Sakeena
I'm Farhat Sakeena, a certified English language teacher and proofreader with a BS Hons in English Language and Literature from Govt College University Faisalabad. Holding a 120-hour TEFL certification from World TESOL Academy, I've honed my skills in teaching English online and providing high-quality proofreading services. As a dedicated freelancer, I help students and professionals improve their language skills and refine their writing.

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2 comments

Bushra Fatima May 31, 2025 - 3:42 pm

Very nice mamm

Reply
Chathuni June 1, 2025 - 2:43 am

Keep up the amazing work!

Reply

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