I wanted to fly to London and sit on the lawn with you & have a lengthy conversation about mothers day and expectations (now there is a word that has caused me no end of frustration over the decades). Anyway, just to say, my mother and I had a testy relationship & it probably started with Canadian Mothers day often falling on MY birthday. What a gyp!
I could go on Leah, but I really don’t want to mess with your wonderfully free feeling about ‘no expectations’. To give you a little window into my world (back in 2019), here’s what I wrote Re: Expectation. These days I’m trying to lower my anticipation along with my alcohol use;)
Haha— great column! And of course you are right. We all have (and are entitled to) expectations, but in order to strive toward contentment surely we need to pick our battles and manage ourselves at the same time? Needs and wants overlap — especially with dependents. It’s a negotiation and if it isn’t there’s always the option to leave the table. Mother’s Day is antithetical to the structure of my family and many others. I live in a community so rejecting it feels cynical or at least impossible without exiling myself. This is my compromise.
Compromise, accommodation, and letting things be are the stitches that keep society clothed. There have been times when being a hermit has had a certain appeal. I like myself as a loner, yet Covid taught me that w/o contact of some sort I start to get irritable. You were one of several friends I found, at a digital distance, whose connection provided contentment.
I wanted to fly to London and sit on the lawn with you & have a lengthy conversation about mothers day and expectations (now there is a word that has caused me no end of frustration over the decades). Anyway, just to say, my mother and I had a testy relationship & it probably started with Canadian Mothers day often falling on MY birthday. What a gyp!
I could go on Leah, but I really don’t want to mess with your wonderfully free feeling about ‘no expectations’. To give you a little window into my world (back in 2019), here’s what I wrote Re: Expectation. These days I’m trying to lower my anticipation along with my alcohol use;)
https://catchmydrift.blog/2019/04/22/re-expectations/
Haha— great column! And of course you are right. We all have (and are entitled to) expectations, but in order to strive toward contentment surely we need to pick our battles and manage ourselves at the same time? Needs and wants overlap — especially with dependents. It’s a negotiation and if it isn’t there’s always the option to leave the table. Mother’s Day is antithetical to the structure of my family and many others. I live in a community so rejecting it feels cynical or at least impossible without exiling myself. This is my compromise.
Compromise, accommodation, and letting things be are the stitches that keep society clothed. There have been times when being a hermit has had a certain appeal. I like myself as a loner, yet Covid taught me that w/o contact of some sort I start to get irritable. You were one of several friends I found, at a digital distance, whose connection provided contentment.