I told my friend the other day that I was interested in seeing a certain movie. Since I knew he had seen the movie already I asked him what he thought of it."It's good," he said. "As long as you don't go in with really high expectations."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "If you go in expecting this really great movie, then you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. The key to enjoying the movie is to expect that it is a complete waste of time and money. Then you'll really be able to appreciate it for the not-so-terrible, better-than-crappy, highly mediocre movie that it is."
"Hmmm..." I hmmmed.
I decided to take his advice and lower my expectations before seeing the movie. I entered the movie theater expecting the absolute worst--maybe the same you'd expect from a four-hour musical about dentistry. And you know what? He was right. It was the most pleasantly average, perfectly run-of-the-mill, amazingly not-stellar movie that I had ever seen.
So I think I've discovered the secret to living a happy life. It all has to do with your expectations. Let me give you a few examples of how I have applied this principle in real-life situations.
In the past, when my computer was on the fritz, I would say,
"Oh. you. crappy. piece of crap. computer."
But now I say,
"Oh what a delightful paperweight!"
You see how lowering my expectations magically transformed my computer from a worthless piece of crap into a pretty fly paperweight? I mean, how many paperweights have you seen that come equipped with an LCD blue screen of death?
And then there's my upstairs neighbor (see post Quarterly Statistics). I used to expect her to act like a human being. But now I've lowered her status in my mind to that of some highly-developed animal, like a slug. Now, instead of expecting her to turn her music off when everyone is trying to sleep, I only expect her to leave a sticky trail of slime wherever she goes. And she doesn't disappoint.
Ok, so it's not Descartes. But I still think there's something to my newfound philosophy.
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14 comments:
I think you are on to something ...
My experience: Several years ago, I saw the movie A Walk to Remember expecting a horrible, made-for-teen, career-advancing movie. And I was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't that bad.
When someone then recommended that I read the book because it was "so good," I ended up very disappointed. At the time, I was a literature major and had a different definition of what "so good" was. Perspective and expectation make all the difference.
That said, I *hated* Great Expectations as did most of the high school class I read it with. We begged our teacher not to assign the text again, but two years later, my brother read it in the same class.
That's like saying to someone, "Congratulations! You're the world's tallest midget!"
No offense to the vertically challenged...
You think you're funny. But you're not.
Interesting. I'll try that out.
You're such an optimist.
i completely agree! time and time again i have learned the hard way that if you try to expect anything from anyone that you generally end up disappointed. but, if you assume that they won't come through and they end up actually coming through, you get a pleasant surprise; otherwise, you just end up being disappointed... again. this type of logic works particularly well for holidays as well, and helps reduce disappointment on your birthday, christmas morning, new year's eve, valentine's day, anniversaries... the list goes on. while i may seem like a pessimist, i assure you that i'm an optimist that has good reason to be cynical....
I hate to discourage your new found optimism regarding your "fly paperweight", but due to the superabundance of computers with Microsoft operating systems, I have personally seen more paperweights with LCD screens and the blue screen of death than I can count. Yours is nothing special.
P.S. I can, like, count to...a really high number...that I can't quite remember right now.
A couple of thoughts:
Alexander Pope:
'Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed' was the ninth beatitude.
Brian Tracy:
Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.
Me:
I'd rather live with fairly realistic expectations and risk an occasional disappointment.
One of my former roommates and I used a similar technique when we were both depressed to prevent us from being too negative. Instead of looking at all the bad points of a movie or experience or whatever, we'd just point out everything that could be worse but wasn't.
So, for instance, she'd ask how my day was, and I'd say, "Well, nobody in my family died today, I didn't have any limbs amputated in a freak accident, the apartment didn't burn down while we were gone, and I wasn't eaten by wolves or polar bears or anything, so, all things considered, it wasn't a bad day."
When you look at it like that, nothing is really too bad. I mean, unless one day your legs do get amputated by a train and your apartment burns down and your loved ones all get eaten by sharks or something. Then it might be hard to come up with something to cheer you up.
I do remember when we saw The Village ! I hope your expectations weren't too high for that movie, but I guess that since I jumped out of my seat a couple of times you weren't disappointed by that movie. I miss you! Maybe I will have to fly out there to visit you for a weekend or you could come out to Utah.
OK I will stop laughing at some point...
The image of the slug was almost too much for me. :-)
Yes, I would say that I totally agree on the expectations thing. Except once. I went into watching Fantastic Four: the silver surfer, thinking it would be bad. But it was worse than bad, so then I still felt like I had wasted 2 precious hours of my life. So I think that some things are just not possible to have low enough expectations for!
Perhaps I should lower my expectations for how often new blogs should be posted so I can be more excited when there is something new.
AA, you are hilarious. Paperweight- i love it. I just figured out how to subscribe to blogs in outlook. ooooo. So now I can stay up 2 date, yay.
Anyway Happy B'day soon!
~Bryan
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