Expectations.

Yes, I'm displaying my lack of artistical talent for all to see.

The Silken Tent
- Robert Frost

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

Do you ever feel that you are entrapped by the expectations of others? As egregious as this sounds, I often feel that it is not my expectations for my life that drives me to move on and succeed, but the expectations of others.

Sometimes, it is the loving pull of the parental units that insists that you strive harder, that even doing better than everyone else is not really enough. (Perhaps this is merely a cultural thing.) That not only do you need to do better than everyone, but you must do better than what you did in the past. At times, I feel tortured by this feeling of inadequacy. Will I always feel that scoring the highest score on an exam isn't good enough unless it is a triple digit score?

There are other expectations, such as the expectations of friends, whom, as cherished as they are, weigh down on you when you don't wish to hear about it. Don't take this wrong, I know that often as they rely on me, I do rely on them. However, there are those times that it is inconvienent. For instance, when you are feeling very depressed for whatever reason, a friend calls you to share the news that he broke up with his girlfriend and just wants some sympathy and a punching bag to get the anger out of his system. Being a good friend can sometimes mean that you stay up until six am in the morning listening to him wax on about how things should have been, and you knowing full well that you will have to be at work at nine.

Expectations could come from your workplace. For example, your job expecting you to be on time, even though you haven't slept a wink. Another example would be having the hot, yet clueless secretary of your supervisor's boss demanding that you provide a pointless metric report on how well you have been selling service contracts that you're not allowed to pitch during the work hours, and won't get paid for until the customer sends in a check with all the signed paperwork. Or having them expecting you to just pick up without warning and fly out on the six o'clock flight the next morning for four hours, then drive another three hours to a client's location, fix their machine in four hours, get back into the car and drive another three hours north to your hotel (in total, a 17 hour day including the two hour wait at JFK to board the plane or the 45 minute drive to the airport) and get paid for a mere 9 hours. Then wake up at five in the morning to do it all over again. And upon returning to the office, get berated and accused of trying to get the company in trouble for not taking your unpaid lunch hour.

Perhaps it's not the expectations that grate at me so much as the insensitive ingrates who expect them from me. Maybe I am embittered by the greedy ones who take advantage of those who are willing to freely give of themselves. Is this the reason that my social skills are stunted? Is the root cause of why I can't trust anyone is really due to the fact that I have been taken in, then exploited beyond any acceptable level based on promises that things will improve (conditions never appreciably improved while I was there) and finally discarded when I was no longer wanted?

If so, a curse on those who did so only for the opportunity to get ahead. May their lives be interesting beyond measure, may their efforts lead them to nothing but ruin, may they see their opportunities of happiness fade like the last rays of the setting sun, may the relationships that they treasure turn to faded memories of a happier time never to be attained henceforth, may their friendships become nothing more than distant acquaintances and may they always know for the rest of their living days that the reasons for their losses rested entirely on their machiavellian ambition. So sayeth the meek and humble of the earth.

(Well, didn't that just take a detour at the end? Hopefully, this allows the bile and anger I have felt towards my last employer finally find a release and I can move on with my life. Though, in this case, my vitrification lies wholy on middle management.)