‘You can have me anytime you want’

Don’t ever take any promise.

One of the hardest things in my life is probably to not have expectations towards anything.

Why would I do that? Well, if I have expectations, I’m focusing my attention on a certain outcome in the future. However, if that expected outcome doesn’t happen at my expected time (or it maybe even never happens), I feel disappointed or frustrated. All that magic I created out of those beautiful expectations blows up and makes me feel like I’m not enough. I wanted to ‘have’ or ‘own’ something and I couldn’t. Even if it is just a mental construct I’m expecting. It still makes me feel like I can’t have something I want.

Well, this is the case when we expect something positive to happen.

If we expect something negative and it never happens, we might be happy about it. But then I didn’t have a good time while I was experiencing my expectations because I was worrying about the negative thing that was going to happen.

Therefore, I have to have no expectations at all. Whether something happens or not, won't affect me emotionally, because I wasn’t attached to any particular outcome in the first place.

Cool. I guess I figured it out. Sounds pretty easy...

…unless…

I trick myself into having expectations because I'm using somebody else as the trigger.

I’m sure all of us have given a promise or two throughout our lifetime.

What is a promise?

When I give a promise I’m saying, something particular will happen at a certain time and place…

Oh oh….

She said ‘You can have me anytime you want’.

Wow, that’s a promise! A really good one, too, don’t you think?

That’s exactly the promise every guy like me wants to hear.

So, I took it. I took the promise thinking, 'I believe you'. The moment I took it I started to expect her to react a certain way at a time of my choice. Every time I want to ‘have’ her, I can. Suddenly, I have an expectation that something particular will happen at a certain time and place. Yep,…

It wasn’t my idea though, was it? I smoothly glided into this one.

Now, she just told me, she was too tired. Therefore, she broke her promise. I can’t have her. If I get disappointed I would have had expectations. I could blame her for giving a promise and not holding it, but what's the point of that? That's just me resisting against something I can't change. As long as I'm taking responsibility I will always be the one in the drivers seat of my life. She might offer me a promise, but I don't have to take it. No expectations, right?

If I'm not attached to whether she holds her promise or not, I won’t be disappointed if she breaks it, or not.

Always take responsibility. It's one of your great powers.

Jelly