Expectations..

It really becomes disappointing when we set high expectations of "someone or something "and then that "someone or something" fails to meet our lofty expectations. At that point, one has to question oneself: if the fault was with that "someone or something" or was it with our own expectations?

The expectations can be faulty because they were unrealistic. Many times we meet new people or get into new projects thinking everything with those will be perfect. The reality of this world is that people are not perfect and neither are projects. In fact we have heard this can be a huge problem in marriages too where spouses set high expectations based on what they expect their spouse to be ( or not to be ) , which can be unrealistic at some level. When meeting these expectations become exposed as unfeasible, we may want to walk away and "give up"

One problem is that these expectations can be implicit and the other party may be totally unaware of these expectations. So one step would be to make these expectations explicit so the other party knows whats expected and perhaps they can alert you on the lack of pragmatism in your expectations. Now, when these expectations are not met we should be forgiving and merciful and help the person or project in getting to our expectations i.e. not being arm-chair critics saying this is wrong and that is wrong and so on.

Last but not least, ( this should be first), the best attitude is to try to (know and) meet Allah's expectations of us in each situation and to expect the minimum from others.