expectations: notes to myself

I'm moving though a very painful week. A week when people I had considered friends threw me under the bus.  Or that's how it seems to me. And how it seems to dear friends who have comforted me.

The particular incident isn't important to write about, nor is the bruised part of me necessary to lay out for examination. What is important is to notice once again, how defeating it is to have specific expectations of people. To believe that they will act as I would have acted in the same situation.

I fall for this all the time!

Sometimes it is a small matter, other times it's big.

I did a Google search for "expectations" and immediately got a few million hits.

One of my favourites is a quote from Louise Beal who says, "Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood."  William Shakespeare follows with "Expectation is the root of all heartache." 

And finally, the one that seems to resonate most today, "One of the hardest things you will ever have to do, my dear, is to grieve the loss of a person who is still alive." (My father's advice #1) 

Brian claims my pain is consistent with my present astrology transit: Saturn, the ruler of the universe, is square to my Aries moon.  This is a challenging time for me emotionally, akin to a teacher striking my knuckles with a ruler. Difficult transits are never brief, it appears-- this will hang around until December, so Brian says!

An antidote to my pain arrived at 10 a.m. this morning.  My friend, Joanna, came over for coffee and a spin through hundreds of my Cuba photographs stored on my computer.  We love the same clotheslines, broken chairs and wonderful abstractions of colour on plastered walls.  A photographic soulmate!


So, partly to push my hurt away, I started going through words and phrases that I have gathered over several years. Cut-outs from magazines relating to art and life's journey and sometimes spiced with a healthy dose of humour.

These paper scraps don't give credit to the original writer, they are simply borrowed words. Moving some paper bits around, messages appear, and, this afternoon, they seem to both calm me and make me smile.

While I love "a smoky and uproarious arena for self-criticism" and "Baby powder, dead fish, wax, and car engines", the word pictures following are my choices today.

The small clipping with orange letters above says, "So many thoughts are just space fillers."

            Since the clipping are difficult to read, I'll transcribe them
                           and/or click on any image to enlarge.

The larger newspaper clipping above says: "Whatever you are most passionate about in life, that is what you should be concentrating on now. Forget duty, forget about routine- the only thing that matters is that you free the creative side of your nature and enjoy every minute of every hour of every day."

The smaller clipping supports that. "For the soul needs more than useful things, and to supply that need, art has always existed and always will."  

And finally Picasso says, "Art washes from every soul the dust of everyday life."







The paper bit I chose last is a reminder. 

"People need someplace to go, something to do and someone to love."


                              Amen.