Okay, we’ve all heard this before – go into something with great expectations and you will no doubt be disappointed.  In my life, this has proved to be true about everything from relationships to jobs to vacations. As much as I want to believe the opposite (Expect great things and they WILL happen!) that has rarely been true.

So today, my word prompt is: Expectations!

Actually, when I look back on my life, it’s kind of funny how often I’ve thought ‘big’ and ended up with expectations dashed. (Take my recent Honeymoon From Hell story on this blog, for example!)

Today, I was thinking about all the things that can go wrong on vacations, in general. Here’s the list I came up with:

hotel is under renovations (happened to me), clunker car from the rental place (happened to me), a delay on one leg of the flight caused a missed connection and an overnight stay (happened to me), luggage lost during flight (happened to me), reservation for a room was cancelled inadvertently (happened to me) — OMG. Is there anything that hasn’t happened? I leave home and I am fair game for every inconvience there is. But, so are you.

Life is a crap shoot. I guess what matters the most is how you react when your expectations (and/or reservations) are not met. But when it comes right down to it, this is true whether you are on vacation or not!

My mind scurried on to things that can happen at home that sometimes cause ME (and other people) to FREAK OUT!

Electricity goes out, water line break floods the house, water is off (Period), a bird flies into the house, a SNAKE gets in the house, there’s a mouse in the kitchen, there’s a gargantuan spider in the bathtub, the cable goes out and the internet doesn’t work, the microwave breaks, I lose my phone — JeeZ. Now I’m really stressed, if I wasn’t stressed before from work and life in general. 

I expect home to be my haven. Just like I expect vacations to be stress free. Don’t you?

Blah. Expectations are disastrous. Expect the worse and then be delighted that it doesn’t happen. Better yet, just expect to live through the day, taking whatever you are handed and being grateful for the opportunity to be alive.