It is common to put personal expectations on others especially in our relationships with people. Oftentimes these expectations mirror our own sets of values, even our strengths and gifts, and rarely according to the same conditions available in people to whom those expectations we place. It is through these great expectations that we inevitably are bound to encounter disappointments and regrets. Even with our friends and spouses, the same outcome can be seen happening in invidual lives.Handling expectations this way seriously miss the reality of human diversity. If my values, strengths and giftedness differ even with those in my spouse or friends, how much more those people who I knew much less.
People tend to place expectations on matters that, in a specific situation, they themselves can do. But given the same situation, diversity ensures that another person's action or decision differ widely or narrowly. And where a person may be strong in an area of life, another may be weak; and vice versa. A person who place expectations on others in certain areas in life may fail to meet comparative expectations when placed on him in other areas of concern. The measure that will use on others will inevitably be used on us in different circumstances, and we most likely end up short. It is simply because we are always strong in certain areas and weak in others. That's how God provide equality among His diverse creatures.
A friend may be sensitive to her best friend in the area of emotional needs but not in tact. So if the sensitive friend use sensitivity in times of depression a gauge for the love of her friend, the other may fall short in the same way that the sensitive friend falls short when speech tact becomes the yardstick of behavior.
Even in the workplace, people A can insensitively, or even unfairly, place expectations on people B when people A themselves will fall short when the expectations of people B are used. For instance, an employer demands and expects his employees to work diligently in their jobs to the extent of putting extra hours on it, will the employer meet the employees' expectation based on additional incentives if the employer compensates only with statutory pay? Or will the employer rightly expect his employees to be great in customer service when the company has self-serving employee policies, considering their employees too are their customers--internal customers.
In a world moving through conditional loves, expectations are necessary currencies to ensure that personal interests are served in a person's relationship with others. God corrects this problem through unconditional love--loving without expectations except to be loved freely and voluntarily. And with that freedom is the risk of not being loved in return.
God wants us to join him in the mysteries of love. But he hopes that we will choose to love him back after all those unconditional loving he gives us each day. God does not expect anything from us; he simply wish that we love him too, and consequently we love others too.
The key to loving unconditionally is to let go of the chains of expectations that we tie others with in order to control. Control is the tool of insecurity and fear; and great expectations are works of that tool. To let go of control is to free the human will to love fully, and mirror the unconditional love of his Creator.
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