Great Expectations
The quiet cost of asking too little of the people we care about.
One of the harshest words we have in our vocabulary, in my opinion, is expectations. For example, “family expectations” as a phrase is almost always used in a negative tone, accompanied by a heavy sigh. If a manager at work uses the word “expectations” on your performance or behaviour at work, usually it means you are not getting paid for whatever it is that is expected of you. If you don’t, you just won’t be seen in good light. You just have to do it. Ouch. What a weapon!
At some point, at least some of us probably would have been scolded with the words: “I expected better of you!” Trauma!
High drama aside, most of us do carry two very different measuring sticks. The one we hold up to ourselves is unforgiving: we should be further along, more disciplined, more accomplished, better. We lie awake auditing the distance between who we are and who we meant to become.
Conversely, the stick we hold up to our friends is almost comically gentle. It’s about being generous, being forgiving. And also, we want to be liked.
We are brutal with ourselves and lenient with everyone we care about, and we tend to congratulate ourselves for the second half of that. Being easy on our friends feels like kindness.
Personally, I’ve held that view for a very long time: that I was being kind to my friends so I give them lots of allowance.
The low bar comes from a good place. We don’t want to nag. We’ve absorbed the sensible advice about not projecting our anxieties onto others, about letting people live their lives. We know how it feels to be on the receiving end of someone else’s disappointment, and we don’t want to be that person. So we ask nothing, and we call it acceptance.
I love my friends, so I accept them as who they are, right? If only it were so simple!
Expecting something (more? better?) of a person is not the opposite of accepting them. It is a form of respect. When you expect a friend to show up, to follow through, to grow into the version of themselves you both know is in there, you are telling them you believe they are capable of it. Expectation says: I see more in you than you’re currently achieving.
The absence of expectation, however soft it feels, carries a quieter and colder message — that you don’t think they have it in them, or that you’re not invested enough to mind. There is a cost to all this gentleness, and it is not only personal. Friendships built on mutual low expectations tend to stay shallow. Nothing is asked, so nothing much is given; the relationship idles along in pleasant, undemanding company.
It can be hard having to deal with high expectations. High expectations can feel demanding, fussy, disruptive.
I hate to say this, but Sarawak feels like it needs a bit of disruption. For Sarawak to step up and fulfil its potential, we need to have high expectations of each other. Do better, be better. Or be reprimanded when we don’t. To keep our expectations low is to patronise our existence and to say, “Yeah, we’re ok being just ok, some of us do well even though a lot of us don’t. And that’s ok. It’s all ok.” When in reality, it’s not ok and we can be so much better! It is the most heartbreaking sound of all: the sound of a sigh at the face of low expectations.
Nearly everything worth having is built on webs of expectation between people who owe each other nothing by contract or blood. A functioning neighborhood, an honest workplace, a movement that outlasts its founders, a country that is fair to its members — none of these can be assembled by individuals working in parallel, each perfecting himself in private. They are made of people expecting things of one another and, mostly, delivering. Lower the expectations we place on each other and the whole structure sags. A just and prosperous society is not a solo achievement stacked a million times over. It is a collective one, and collective things require us to be, at times, demanding of each other.
So the task is not to lower our standards, and it is not to unleash our savage self-criticism on our friends. It is to equalize — to close the absurd gap between the two sticks. Forgive yourself a little more; you are not the only person allowed to fail. And expect a little more of the people around you — not perfection, but effort, presence, the honoring of what was promised. Let them feel that you are counting on them, and let them count on you in return.
The kindest thing you can do for a friend is rarely to ask nothing of them. It is to believe, out loud and with some insistence, that they are capable of more — and then to build, together, the kind of life and the kind of society that no one was ever going to manage alone.
Sarawak, you can do better.