Expectations

If you look up quotations about expectations online, you will find a million very encouraging snippets about how we become what we expect of ourselves.  I am not quite sure that is absolutely the truth, or at least the whole truth.  It's very nice to think that, but there's another ingredient in the mix that can't be ignored.  At the very least it has to be overcome:  the expectations of others.

Why do these matter?  Why am I writing about this on a gloomy rainy morning?

An email got me thinking about it, a petition from change.org concerning Trayvon Martin.  Expectations, what somebody thought he could be, determined his fate in the worst possible way.  No matter what he thought of himself or what his parents thought of him, he could not overcome the outside world's expectations of his behavior or his race.

The judgments we make of each other do matter.  When we look at each other and only see huge strips about which we have preconceived notions, we injure both the individual at hand and ourselves.  That's the best scenario.  The worst?  Well....I think we've seen it recently.  It involves snap decisions and funerals.

It's easy to say that we should just ignore the way others see us, rise and overcome, but the weight of it sits on us, molds us.  I see it every day in my classroom.  Students who have parents who expect them to do well generally do.  Students who have parents who berate them or ignore them frequently are lost or struggling.  This is simplistic, and of course, there is internal motivation in every case.  Some of the students who have parents who expect them to do well suffer from too much pressure, expectations that are unreasonable or too high.  Some of the students who have no expectations at all succeed because they create goals for themselves.   By and large, though, like water wearing away stone, the judgments of others can shape an individual.

I've experienced it myself.  I was a foreigner in a place where foreigners were dangerous, and despite my general lack of threatening-ness (not a word, but you get it), I was still treated like I might explode into violence at any moment.  Mothers pulled their children away.  Old women watched me warily or moved away on the train.  At first I was embarrassed.  Then I was confused.  Later I was angry.  I found myself wanting to react in the way they were fearing.   If you think I am a monster, well, then....  This was only after a couple of years in this place.  What would it have been like to grow up with these expectations surrounding me?

Of course, I never gave up who I was inside.  I had a strong grounding in who I was to support me. My own expectations for myself were always stronger than theirs for me, my own internal motivation was supreme, but I can't say I didn't feel it.  We have to be careful, I think to look at people as individuals and not stereotypes.  I guess that's harder, more time-consuming, but look at what can be prevented.