Being a full-time RV family, we are on a number of apps and groups of people living the same way we are. This means that we can check the reviews or comments on a place to help us decide if we want to stay there.
Recently, when we were doing a lot of driving, we saw a review of a local Walmart parking lot. What you may not know (and I didn’t before moving into this thing) is that Walmart, Cracker Barrel, Home Depot, and Cabela’s (and others) allow RVs to stay overnight in their parking lots. Well, some of them do. So anyway, there was a review of this local Walmart parking lot where the reviewer gave it one star.
A one star review for the Walmart parking lot. “Too bright, too noisy, and too many people wandering around.”
***eye roll***
We are talking about a parking lot here. A Walmart parking lot. It’s not the Ritz Carlton. Heck, it’s not even a Super8! This is a parking lot for a big box store with questionable values in the middle of nowhere Iowa that is letting you sleep overnight FOR FREE.
Anyway, we ended up staying there for a night. It was fine. And, actually, quieter than some of the other parking lots we’ve slept in. (Talk about sentences I never thought I’d write).
This experience got me thinking about expectations - how do we create them, manage them, and (perhaps most importantly) let go of them?
A friend of my mother’s used to say that there is something to be said for having low expectations.
I think there is a lot of truth to this statement.
I find this to be especially true when traveling or going into new situations. Odds are something will go wrong, or I’ll be disappointed in some way. So, it’s better to anticipate it than let it knock me off course.
Plus, if you aren’t expecting to be wow-ed or accommodated, that leaves more room for happy surprises and moments of appreciation.
Take, for instance, staying at a campground.
I go into the situation assuming the site won’t be level, there will be big loud families on either side of us, and there will be a marching band rehearsing every morning (thanks, Moab Regional High School). I assume the laundry machines will be expensive and/or will break.
I’m not a negative person - I swear. I’m really not. I actually tend to assume the best about people and situations. I really do believe that most people are doing the very best they can.
But when it comes to situations that are out of my control, I try to prepare myself for inconvenience.
Most of the time this works out.
Most of the time this means that I don’t lose my patience when the laundry machine eats my quarters, or the chihuahua next door keeps wandering into our site, or the internet craps out (again!).
And, it means that I am pleasantly surprised when my clothes actually dry in the time allotted for $1.50 in the dryer.
It means I appreciate the quietness of campgrounds when they are calm.
It means I get excited (like, unreasonably so) when the site we pull into is already level!
Now, I don’t want this to seem like I never feel frustrated or disappointed, or even angry at the situations I encounter in my life.
I get frustrated plenty of the time.
More often than not, I am disappointed less by circumstances and more by people - those I know and those I don’t - and how they can let me, and each other, down. I’m often disappointed by what I see on the news, by the inadequacy of our systems, and by the unnecessary fear and aching that happens in our world.
I’m disappointed every time we drive through another small town, and then another, where shops are boarded up and closed. I am disappointed and fearful when I experience the impact of global warming in every place we’ve visited in these past few months. I am disappointed every time I see signs proclaiming that vaccines are harmful, or people unmasked in nearly every store we’ve entered.
With all of these big disappointments, I’m trying more and more to let go of expectations.
I’m not sure whether this is an achievement or something to grieve.
I don’t want to be surprised when people are kind to each other.
I don’t want to live in a world where kindness and civility are rare.
I want to live in a world where that is the rule, not the exception.
I want to live in a world where good things, and people, and experiences are celebrated.
I want to live in a world where we support each other, local businesses, and take care of ourselves and each other.
And, the more and more I live, the more I realize that I can only control myself.
I can only control how I move through this world.
I can only have high expectations for myself and the ways I interact with the people, environment, and circumstances around me.
I can only assume best intentions, acknowledge impacts, create space for imperfection, and allow for teachable moments.
I can let go of the idea that there is one right way to do things.
I can let go of the expectation that things will turn out the way I want them to.
I can let go of the expectation of perfection, and seek another way.
And every day I am invited to do these things over and over again.
We all are - to live into the world we want to see in our own unique, clumsy, unexpected-joy-filled ways.
Every day I am invited to explore the ways expectations help and harm me.
Every day I am invited to consider how I want the world to be, and how the world really is.
Every day I am invited to expand the way I see the world and my place in it.
Every day I am invited to grant myself and the world five-star review or find evidence to the contrary, and have that be okay.
So, today I am choosing to have high expectations for myself, opening myself to possibility, and creating space to be surprised over and over again at the beauty of this world.
This week’s Invitation to Deepening: What expectations do you have for yourself? What expectations do you have for other people? How are they alike or different?
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