Dashed Expectations or Fresh Possibilities?

This week, the Universe has moved things around in my life, and in order to restore my sense of sanctuary and peacefulness I have had to make some adjustments to my vision of the future. Considering how much adjustment we’ve all had to make over the past year, I’m sure you know how that feels. 

When the world changes and my expectations have been upended, I am in need of letting them go. Not easy, but necessary.

There is a saying that says “Lay an expectation, hatch a disappointment.” This might sound pessimistic, but I don’t see it that way. It feels like a bit of an awakening. 

I see this as a reminder that anytime I find myself attaching to a particular outcome, I will cause myself emotional turbulence if and when things don’t go my way.

In spite of my best attempts at coercion, the Universe continues to go do its own thing, to its own end, in its own mysterious ways. And yet somehow, every time, in the long run, even those ways eventually work out for my highest good. Just rarely in the ways that I would have thought.

The relationship that didn’t work out, the job that wasn’t a great fit—I have so many examples of this.

Clearly, the Universe has plans of its own. And one by one, it clips my attachments from me, cleaning me of misplaced anticipations and vain hopes. 

But what this process brings is simply trusting, having hope that things will be OK, without exactly knowing the detail of how that’s going to work. Were my father the preacher still alive, he would probably identify this as having faith.

And so I am bowing to those attachments, those ideas of what I thought the future would be. I’m thanking them for what they have showed me. And I am blessing them and releasing them. 

And whatever expectations you and I may have had to let go of lately, let us together turn our faces toward that even better tomorrow. We can trust that while it might not be what we’ve planned, it will be exactly what we need.

With love and appreciation,

Philip