Reasonable Expectations

The end. The end of the year. The end of the year is near and here we are. No longer near but far from where we started and no idea how close or far we are from where we will yet go.

A success?

Measured against what? Expectations? OK, sure, but whose expectations and how well or should I say ill informed? How could they, or you, or I know what to expect and to what degree said expectations would be filled, lest without having to be constantly reconfigured and refined along the way? As such, becoming less accurate and less similar to what they started out as being and all the while becoming something altogether different. That is not to say more accurate, because for that to be true the new expectations would have to had been made at the same time as the old, incorrect ones, and therefore they too would be incorrect.

The correctness of the more recent and refined expectations is directly corelated to their newness and vice versa, such that as soon as they begin to age, they begin to degrade in accuracy. It is an ever-evolving saga, or journey. So, no. We are nowhere closer to any original expectations at the end of the year than we were at the beginning. We are instead somewhere else, not to say totally unexpected but vastly different than expected at the outset. And I am OK with that. Because, to expect anything less would be shortsighted.

The truth is life happens while it’s happening and we’re always adapting to it or we are lacking and therefore reacting to the inability to adapt. Either way, even if you do wind up where you expected when you expected to with or without whatever you expected to have or be rid of by then, you will arrive differently than you departed in ways you didn’t, couldn’t, never would have expected you might be.