Lose the Fantasy

Being happy has a lot to do with what we expect from life and whether or not our expections are met in the life we've chosen. While there's nothing wrong with having expectations, I think a lot of us fall into the trap of feeling unhappy when we've had unrealistic expectations that can't possibly be met. We develop fantasies and are disappointed when our real lives fall short of them.

Take marriage and family life, for example. Both have been idealized in popular culture forever. We're presented with images of romantic marriage proposals, perfect, happy families in which the parents are always well groomed, the houses are tidy, meals are home-cooked and always ready on time and the children always well-behaved. No one is to blame for this, for these images are usually used to sell something, from box office tickets to detergent. Who would want to buy anything from a bedraggled parent with bedhead trying to wrangle two dirty kids into ratty snowsuits and out of the disaster zone that is their mortgaged-to-the-hilt home? Nobody in their right mind, that's who. And I bet most of us wouldn't include that particular scene in our fantasies either.

And yet, in that scene, there can be so much beauty: The parent has bedhead because she decided to make pancakes for breakfast and skip a shower; the kids look dirty because the frozen blueberries got on their hands while they were helping make the pancakes and those really stain; the house is a disaster because they played a great game of hide-and-seek the night before; the snowsuits are ratty because the parent is concerned for the environment and dresses her kids in hand-me-downs. OK, so maybe the kids are having a fight right now, or the parent is having a moment where she regrets not having showered or even having had kids, but that comes with the territory because it is not a fantasy, it is life.

Fantasies are fun. They can allow us to grow and acheive dreams and all that business. But they glean over most of the stuff real life is made of, because we're not encouraged to see the beauty in that stuff (which is why that stuff isn't used to sell...stuff).

If you find your life is falling short of your fantasies, stop and think about whether the problem is the fantasy or your life. If it's your life, then maybe think of ways to make it more like your fantasy in small ways. If it's your fantasy, then either lose it, or accept it for what it is: a lovely dream.

Why should you take my advice? I'm a pretty happy person and I often think part of the reason for that is that I had low expectations when I was young. A former colleague made me reaize that. She'd been one of these perfect kids who excelled at everything. She told me once that she'd been told for so many years growing up that she would be a future leader, that the world was her oyster, she could achieve anything yada yada yada. And while she was doing just fine in her life, she found that "just fine" wasn't what she'd been lead to expect, and she often felt like she'd somehow failed to attain the heights she'd been promised. Never having been promised I would achieve great things (not a complaint, btw, but I was more of a fly under the radar type of kid), I usually feel pretty pleased with the things I do achieve. I like that.