When we are attached to an expectation and that expectation is violated, something happens. In a fascinating kind of mental alchemy, expectation is transformed into upset.
When we moved into our last apartment, we paid a hefty security deposit. We lived there only eight months and did minimal damage to our apartment. We expected the return of our entire security deposit when we moved out. We were relying on the extra money to help pay our moving expenses.
I was furious! I expected the entire deposit and he stole the other half from me! I held on to the loss of my money lollipop. In this case, the loss of it motivated me to do something about it. I called and wrote letters to the complex. I fought their decision. Eventually, the outcome changed in my favor; I got the other half of my deposit returned to me. Holding on to my attachment, to my expectation of getting my entire deposit back, helped me because it motivated me to fight for what I expected, and I got it!
This disrupts our internal harmony, and in response, we will cling tightly to whatever we have left. We understand that there are gaps and that it gets more vague the further back we go, but we still have the impression of a single fairly consistent record of time.
We rarely question its accuracy. We believe that our eyes and ears are like video cameras, relaying sights and sounds to our brain, which records everything for later use like a mental VCR.
In truth, we have a collection of fragments and familiarities. We process only a fraction of the information our senses take in, and far less makes it into our long-term memory. Our long-term memory fades over time, leaving islands of memory in a sea of haze.
Despite these facts, we tend to feel deeply and viscerally that our memories are reliable and truthful sources of knowledge about the past. We base our attitudes and opinions on our memories; we hinge our entire worldviews on them. How do we maintain the illusion that memory is reliable? The answer, though it might be difficult to believe, is that we fill in the gaps by making stuff up. We paste our current opinions onto the memories of the past.
We fill holes in memories with explanations that make sense to us. We reinvent the past in the image of the present. Memory is blurry; it has far less detail than the original perceptions it comes from. When I was little, my family went on a trip to Colorado. During the entire drive, my dad told us stories about bears. He told us how careful we had to be when outside, how dangerous the bears were, how many of them there were, and how they would eat kids who fought with their parents hah!
Our first night in the hotel, my mom was in the bathroom bathing my little brother. He was able to feel that instead of ignore it until he just acted on it. He also felt OK about being angry and feeling a bit betrayed, but also happy for them that they are together, because he really thinks this friend is a good guy.
I was very proud of him, and mostly want to thank you for writing the book in such a way that a 19 year old could read it and enjoy it and also use the concepts without feeling like it was some kind of psycho-babble! He said that this book was amazing, and that it helped him through a potential big problem, where he could have acted in such a way to lose his friends.
They take good ideas and make them better. Tammy Lenski of Conflict Zen. By using personal examples, you never talk down to the reader. I tend to find discussions about communication very dry and, dare I say, exceedingly boring.
I mean, talking about talking. I wind up pulling her hair a lot, and hurting her scalp — again, I made the usual error. Pace and I talk to each other and at the characters. Laura gets annoyed, because she prefers silence during movies. Rachel scoops up my kitten and ruffles the fur on his belly. The kitten gives her a deep scratch. Pace gets up from the couch in the middle of an episode of Angel and I hit the pause button. The usual error again! The usual error boils down to assuming that others experience the exact same reality we do.
Since our own perspective is the only one we experience directly, we make these kinds of assumptions a lot. These guesses and projections about other people allow us to get by, but unfortunately, most of the time our assumptions are wrong. You have the power; you can choose to appreciate these differences instead of getting angry about them.
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