Unmet Expectation
Existentialism starts with the realization that what we’ve come to expect is not what we expected. Surprised and lost, we look for what pieces we can find in the fallout of an unexpected event to gather ourselves and form ourselves anew. This “new” self exists in an unexpected plane of existence but still remains the old self. We map references that accord with what we’ve come to expect; dogma. Outside dogma, experience is free of expectation and the self is in ruins. The self not knowing the acuity and clear sight it knew before, its maps look like Basquiat paintings.
In the new environment, the new self reconstructs itself based on a mapping of expectations. An example would be a novice fighter and an experienced fighter fighting. The two will meet the same events in the match but from each other’s view. The novice and the experienced will each strike. At the strike, which the other fighter does not know what will be, the experienced fighter will “find” themselves faster. Drawing from past experience, the experienced fighter knows how to reconstruct their own self in such a way that they can map their way to winning. Winning being the ultimate expectation in each fighters heart. As the fight continues, they each see modulating maps towards victory but only one will get there.
The issue is that our own self blooms its expectations from its natural psychological origin: the community. Communities themselves map each other and influence each other’s expectations. From these grandeur schemes, our own complexities mature. If we’re from a simple town, we may not be exposed to a lot of abstract thinking since the community’s expectation is monotonous. If we’re from a network of interconnected cities with wide ranging cultures, we may come to expect less particular outcomes and more general expectations.
If we compare it to melody, the struggle over expectations determines/defines us based on our contribution the community’s expected melody. We may ruin it or beautify it with our action. Each moment is a moment in the interconnected symphony of the universe. And our own capacity to act within it is a chord being pulled to continue and influence the melody. To what end? Beauty for its own sake? For establishing a greater harmony still with each asynchronous culture we find until we’re a greater whole with more synchrony?
What is an unmet expectation? We don’t know because we’ve never met it. We know what an unmet expectation is when we expect something and receive something else instead. In the positive, we are given something. This something is entirely present and unobjectionable insofar as it exists in some form. But our critique of the presentation adds a dimension of negativity. This something is not what we expected. We expected something else. What do we expect? We don’t really know. We just deduce what the positive is relative to how we can influence the circumstances; circumstances we somehow influence with our expectation (eg Dennett’s take on acquired taste).
If we’re free to mess around and influence are own expectations, then this is a kind of freedom. Is as if the fighters in the ring were fighting but not towards winning. Rather if each fighter fought because they were in search for their own goals, then there would be freedom in each moment. If they had their own goals, and even their own goals could change at any moment, then each moment would hold numerous maps we could follow. Each map as valid as the next in terms of helping us decide what we choose to do.
If the experienced fighter was a mentor and, while wanting to win, taught the novice how to win, then there would be freedom in that. Remember that the mentor succeeds when the novice can surpass the mentor. Both are headed to a greater unexpected circumstance willingly. What will the novice do once they have power? Will they be a good mentor as well?
Both fighters need faith in each other. The novice because they are existing without expectations; waiting for the mentor to teach the novice how to expect; acquire a taste for the fight. The mentor needs faith because once the mentor shows the novice how to travel, the novice will be able to travel where they please whereas before they couldn’t.
With each lesson, the novice grows in their ability to map and get around events. It loops back to the beginning where the novice is where they were at the beginning of the lessons but now with the ability to get to where they want to go even faster. Being able to travel better presents the novice a fresh pair of eyes. They experience what they expected but with the added negative experience of the dogma they learned. Thus even if they are where they were at the beginning back again, the entire scenario is full of different possible outcomes that weren’t possible before.
The novice is then in the position of the mentor. The mentor experienced something similar in their own journey. The mentor then continued the journey into the unknown, creating an even better mentor from the novice. From the novice came unexpected circumstances that the mentor had not met before that allowed the novice to best the mentor. The novice knows to expect things that the mentor didn’t know were taught. The new mentor now travels living their expectations or bringing about expectations in others. Either way the new mentor continues the melody and the synchrony.
What we expected but have never received is still not met. Ironically, what we expect comes from our evolutionary past. Perhaps the maps of our ancestors were mistaken and our psychology is lost. From the present moment, the psychology maps out its own world based on its own wants and needs. But how are the wants and needs determined? How are expectations created? How does the melody change genres? How can we bring about the change in expectation?
