Managing Expectations
Don’t expect something from someone that they’re not capable of giving you. Most of us know the wisdom of this old adage, as well as the challenge of living it in our relationships. And most of us, if we’re honest, can point to painful memories of times our expectations of another has been damaging to the other person as well as to our relationship with them.
Yet as dangerous as it is to hold unrealistic expectations for other people, it’s nothing compared to the damage we do when we turn unrealistic expectations on ourselves. In our quest to fulfill our dreams (and sometimes others’ dreams), we think we can mold ourselves into anything we want to be. We push ourselves more and more and wonder why we feel little sense of satisfaction from the effort of it. When we fail to meet our goals, we blame ourselves. If we do meet our goals, we sense hollowness at the core of it—a gnawing suspicion that we’re inches away from disaster. This emptiness is frequently accompanied by exhaustion because we know we have to keep whipping ourselves into form for the next goal. We know that it’s human nature that today’s successes become tomorrow’s starting points. We know what it’s costing us to keep going.
Many of us were raised with the belief that if we worked hard enough, we could have it all. And, because we could have it all, we should have it all. Nature be damned; success was all about nurture and hard work. Yet, as the old cliché says, a leopard can’t change its spots. We can only improve on what our nature gives us, not rewrite our base programming and become someone else entirely. Even if we could do so, it would do us irreparable harm by cutting us off from the well of our own truths, damning ourselves to a lifetime of internal homelessness.
It’s easy to see why we fall prey to this kind of thinking. Society’s view of musical success is the concert artist who makes chart-topping recordings, enjoys numerous international engagements, and is sprinkled with the fairy dust of fame and recognition. Their technique is flawless. Their interpretations of the music are both soulful and scholarly. They have the hearts of poets and the charisma of movie stars. When they die, their recordings will enter the canon as definitive interpretations that will inspire future generations of pianists.
Who wouldn’t want to be this person? Yet who among us possesses the innate abilities, physical attractiveness, charisma, dedication, focus, and expert training to become this person? Most of us know this intellectually, but emotionally there’s all too often a corner in each of our minds that tells us that if we just tried a little harder, maybe we could transform ourselves into this dream. We fail. Like Icarus, our self-constructed wings melt and we crash back to reality, where the pain of failure forces us to either face the truth of who we are or to construct another pair of wings and try the impossible again.
When—either through exhaustion or self-examination—we stop trying to be what we’re not, we have a choice between being resigned to our fate or accepting it. The music industry is littered with individuals who chose resignation over acceptance. The disappointment and bitterness shows on their faces, comes out in jealousy-driven backbiting behavior towards colleagues, and (if they’re teachers) gets channeled into using their students in proxy wars with rival teachers. These bitter souls destroy rather than create, and in doing so they fail to bring forth their own internal riches.
Those who choose acceptance enjoy a much more rewarding life path. They mourn the loss of their dream, and then they get down to the business of figuring out exactly what their strengths and weaknesses are as artists and as human beings. No longer do they waste their creative fire trying to become someone else; now they turn that passion into manifesting the best of what they’ve been given and learn to live within what nature bestowed on them at birth. They let go of that which was never theirs. They recover and live their own unique gifts. They stop holding themselves to another’s standards and start living by their own. They become fully human, and in doing so manifest something truly unique in a world dedicated to facades.
The music and the life that spring from our core selves may not be as glittery and showy as our old ideals, but it is rich with an authenticity that no polished image can offer. We relax. In that relaxed state we find new riches in the music we play—pieces that we’ve chosen because they match who we truly are. The musical garden we grow for ourselves may be filled with different things than we planned in our more grandiose days, but what’s there is more satisfying and brings a lasting sense of rightness and accomplishment. And it is here, from this garden of humble authenticity, that our music speaks of beauty deeper than glitter.
Photo by Diego Jimenez, courtesy of UpSplash