Prologue

Heya dear readers.

You can skip this chapter if you want to. Our MC is just monologuing in this one, nothing important. You can read this if you want to know a little about what this book really focuses on.

Peace.

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Expectations.

A word that entails a strong belief that something will happen or be the case. In everyday life, it usually entails a person's belief in someone, that they will or should achieve something.

Everyone has some expectations. These expectations generally come in a form beneficial to us in some way. Let's take 'weather' for an example.

When you are excited about going out of your house, you are expecting the sky to stay clear. You hope that it doesn't rain that day, expecting the 'God' to keep the sky clear so that you can enjoy the day to your heart's content.

In this case, you are planning on going out, so you are expecting the weather to stay clear off rain as it is beneficial to you.

Whereas, if you don't want to go to your office, or school, or any other place you don't want to go, you hope it rains.

It doesn't matter if your wish means a person out there who wants to enjoy his time out of his house, wouldn't be able to do so if your expectation comes true, as this way is more beneficial to you.

In the end, we all want what's best for us, that is the way of life.

Expectations, however, get ugly when we put them on someone.

Let's take another example.

When a person in their youth, fails to achieve something that they genuinely wanted to achieve, they put all their expectations on their child to achieve that in their stead. It doesn't matter if their child wants it or not, in the end, those expectations are much more important to this person than their own child's dream.

This is something that can be seen happening in many households. You can see many parents hoping their kids to be engineers, doctors, actors or anything they wanted to become themselves but failed to do so for whatever reasons.

These expectations are toxic, not only for the children, but for the parents themselves.

When these parents put such expectations on their kids, they don't put thoughts into account on their children not liking what they have planned for them. They genuinely believe that what they are doing is beneficial for their kids. They believe that their children will understand once they reach adulthood and see the world for what it's worth.

They don't take into account that these expectations, slowly but surely, start suffocating their kids. These expectations result in nothing but hate, resentment, stress and many different negative feelings to grow in the child's head. These feelings go to such length sometimes, that the child tries to find solace in escapism.

They end up choosing suicide over living upto their parents' expectations.

Now we all know, this is something that a parent never wishes upon his/her child no matter how strict they are. In the end, it breaks them apart to witness their child's end to come this way. An end that came so soon because they shoved their expectations on their child.

It's not to say that having expectations is always bad.

Expectations sometimes prove beneficial to us, as we can use those expectations to better ourselves.

When we expect ourselves to be better at 'something', we try to live up to our own expectations by putting in more effort. This leads us to becoming better at that 'something'.

Even when our parents put their expectations on us, many of us feel that we need to live up to those expectations. We try our damn hardest to make our parents proud.

Even relationships are built upon expectations. A woman wants a man she dates to be 'blah, blah,' something, whereas a man wants his girlfriend to be honest, beautiful, loyal, charming and many other things that I don't want to discuss.

Society expects us to be honest and upright individuals, always being kind to others. Our teacher expects us to be attentive in class. Our boss expects us to be great at our work, etc.

All these things, in the end, are able to develop us into a better version of ourselves. So, I don't think expectations are only bad, it depends on how you perceive them as. If you perceive these expectations as a burden on you, then that's all they will ever be. But if you genuinely want to live up to these expectations then who knows? Maybe you will, in the end, become an overall better person.

In conclusion, it depends on you, it always comes down to you. What are you planning to do?

Are you going to live up to these expectations put on you, or are you going to give up?

Or maybe, just maybe, are you planning to do something which proves to all the people who have high expectations on you, that you can be happy, even if you don't follow the path they have decided for you?

In the end I ask, what are you planning to do?