Recently, a friend made a remark about her disappointment following her increasing dependence on other people due to her deteriorating health situation. The relationship between dependence and disappointment is fascinating. The more dependent you become, the more disappointments you are likely to have. After giving this “statistical” relationship some consideration, I suddenly realised what is binding them: Expectations.
The rationale behind this is fairly simple: the more dependent you become, the more expectations you will (need to) make, and the more likely you will be disappointed.
The relationship between Expectations and Disappointments was already mentioned in my 14 August 2015 blog on Expectations: A new MRI study from University College of London indicates that the secret to happiness is low expectations. Author and neuroscientist Robb Rutledge says, “Happiness depends not on how well things are going but whether things are going better or worse than expected.”
In other words: Once you limit your expectations then your disappointments will decrease, and your happiness will increase. The more expectations you have, the more you will be disappointed in life, and the less happy you will feel.
So, what explains the relationship between Dependence and Expectations??
I suppose that the relationship between Dependence and Expectations is pretty straightforward: the more dependent you become, the more you need to rely on other people. The need to rely on other people automatically creates expectations about their (present and future) behaviour. Animals and things (eg, cars, gadgets) are fairly reliant in their behaviour and thus seldom disappoint. People are just different as they will always have a conflict between self-interest and compassion for others.
The relationship between dependence, expectations, disappointments and happiness is in all domains of our Life: career, family, health, sports, and studies. Please also see my 8 May blog on Success and Failure and my October 2015 blogs on “In pursuit of happiness” (part 1, part 2, part 3).
Yesterday evening, I was finally watching the 2016 Netflix movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny” (IMDb). One of the main movie characters mentioned (>38 min) that he finally achieved what he had been looking for his entire life: Detachment and Enlightenment. Both are a great way to avoid dependence and disappointment in life and to increase happiness.
Pharrell Williams – Happy (2013) – artist, lyrics, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
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