Just food for thought, but sometimes I wonder if I set expectations that are simply too high for some people.
Somehow I got thinking about this tonight and it really made me wonder because often times I find myself getting angry with people and they don’t even know it – in one hand, I factor the values and moral implications that I [try] to live my own life to, and in the other, it also needs to be considered that not everyone else shares these points of view. So by expecting people to live by the ideals that I have in my own mind, am I setting unfair expectations or merely setting the bar for the kinds of people that I want to be around?
And the bigger question, why do I let some people slip farther away from these expectations than others???
I’ve got to admit that I’m more than a bit torn right now because part of me wants to proclaim that everyone should be able to live by their own morals…and I would certainly agree with that, but at the same time, it seems to me like this is something that pretty much everyone does, even if we don’t realize it. It could be something as simple as returning a phone call in a timely manner or your etiquette as far as opening doors for other people, or on a more grand scale such as your opinions of life, love and the pursuit of happiness – I guess we all judge people to some extent … its how we chose which people to be friends with in the first place, what kinds of company we keep on the weekends, and so on and so forth.
This is probably a topic larger than any single LiveJournal post can handle, so for now I’ll end by just throwing a couple of questions out there…
- When I find myself getting upset, is it because someone no longer meets the expectations that I had at the time or simply because my expectations have evolved beyond something that said person can meet?
- If the latter, is it fair to try to hold someone to these new expectations that weren’t conditional when you first met?
- And ultimately, does this lead back to pave the reasoning for why some would believe that the past should stay in the past, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and your best friends are the ones that you have right now?I’m certainly not pointing fingers at anyone, mind you – just entertaining an intriguing topic that I pondered during the drive home tonight, so feel free to chime in with any comments or ideas. It’s like sociology all over again… 😛