I was thinking over the weekend of how friendships can be affected by "Understand and Expectation". I remember years ago, during my youth, I always has this question of why does God makes so many people on earth and that they suffer at then end due to misunderstanding and so on. I believe many of us was hurted and disappointed and even discouraged by friends and/or people around us before.
I guess... many of us are hurted, disappointed and discouraged because we placed 'understanding & expectation' too highly on a person. We expect them to do certain things or react in certain ways which is within out 'expectation'. We forgot at the same time, a word call 'understanding' exist as well. God has created 'selfishness'... be it you like it or not... so as to protect ourselves. Many times, because of expectation, we failed to be understanding. For an example, You know me quiet well and that I seldom say 'no' for movie, so you came to me and asked me for a movie (thinking I will say 'Yes' - expectation created). I turned your offer down and it hurts your feeling because your expectation is not done accordingly. You got angry with me and without asking further, you started to feel hurt and disappointed. Of all these, you have failed to be understanding in knowing the reason 'why'. You have failed to be understanding. You have exercised your selfishness and placed yourself in the sits and thinking you can be the one who handle things.
The whole thing is called, self - centred. Everything came out from YOU YOU YOU, ME ME ME... and because I like it, I will make the whole world to think that this it the BEST. I like to drink Nescafe and therefore, when my friends said Brand B is good, I will tell them they are WRONG and that NESCAFE is the BEST. Because I feel like eating noodles today, when people suggested to eat rice today, I would tell them they are WRONG and that noodles is not nice. Chinese should take rice for their lunch.
May be KK is a medium size city and that many of the people here only cling to KK for years and they seldom meet other culture, other religion and other type of people in the world and that has made them failed to be considerate and even understand and respect the others. Probably I am more 'sensitive' then the others. But I just do not like it when people stressed that other religion is WRONG. I mean, it's just like them.. that they have yet to discover something better and that's doesn't mean they are WRONG.
Like a decision made by a judge. People will start critising it from their point of view. What's BEST for themselves and they have failed to take other points into consideration. They only EXPECT things to be done on their favour but failed to be understanding to others.
Since young, people has certain expectation on me. My friends always has high expectation on me. They would demand certain things from me, but that's what I hate the most. I hate it when people think I am their 'belonging' and that they can demand and expect something from me. But truely, I discovered that NONE... really put themselves in my shoes and see what I really want. I hate hurting others' feeling, but I couldn't help it most of the time because I really need to do something that I really want and need. So, when someone told me someone is hurt because of myself, it's hurting me even worse because they are not being understanding.
I remember this friend of mine whom I hurted years ago. If you ask me for details, I don't think I remember it because I only knew how deeply I hurted her after she told me. But I did remember it's a terrible incident. haha... Thank goodness she is understanding and that she has forgiven me after I 'explained' things to her. She is still my best friend till today.
So I guess, it's important to balance between the two... Understanding & Expectation!
- understanding & expectation -
