About our expectations

I’ve come to believe, after decades of interacting with and observing fellow humans, that I’ve identified perhaps the foremost cause of problems in interactions with each other.

It can be summarized in two words: Dashed expectations.

It doesn’t matter much if it’s my dashed expectations or those of another. Hurt feelings turn out all the same. And if not paying attention, I won’t even realize what I’ve inadvertently done to another or why I’m acting resentful in my own reactions to someone else’s words or actions.

The truth is anything we do several times involving someone else may be setting expectations we might not realize until a problem arises.

Think I’m full of baloney, do ya? Well, here are several examples of potential misinterpreted overreactions.

If I tell someone I love them every day for a month, then stop, they’re bound to wonder why I quit. Do I not love them anymore? I set their expectation then failed to meet it just once.

If I buy my children a dozen toys each Christmas until they are, say, 8 years old, then cut back to a reasonable six, I’ve dashed their expectation for a “good Christmas” almost in half, so I really can’t blame them for the long faces.

If I make it a point to always be truthful with someone and then I’m dishonest with them once, I can expect them to be affected by my dishonesty in future dealings. Again, I’ll have no one to blame but myself.

If a basketball team makes the Elite Eight in the NCAA March Madness Tournament three years in a row, they have set an expectation for future tournaments. It’s the same for any sporting event. Alabama football fans’ expectations are dashed by an unexpected season with only two or (heaven forbid) three losses.

If I routinely show up five minutes early for work over a year’s time, I’ve set that expectation and anything later causes others to wonder if I’m suddenly slacking.

I’ve found this is true even in small matters. If I tell Jeanetta good night each night then overlook one, she reminds me and wonders why. A less-secure person might misinterpret that lapse as a subtle change in my feelings.

You and I can extrapolate such examples across every aspect of life from our smallest to largest expectations and from childhood to our final breath.

I mention this today only because I believe it can benefit each of us to remain aware as we (often unknowingly) continually set expectations in others through words and actions, while realizing our responsibility in handling them as rational adults.

So, that said, I’m expecting the basketball Razorbacks next season to be in the Elite Eight for the third time in a row after this successful season. How about you?

Highway tragedies

The community of Tishomingo, Okla., population a smidgen over 3,000, recently was dealt a devastating blow when six of its teenage female students were killed after the subcompact car they were in collided with a semi-trailer truck during the high school’s lunch break.

After reading the story the other day, I sat quietly contemplating my own grown children and the ripple effects of such a loss. This was an enormous tragedy for any city. But in an Arkansas community roughly the size of Gravette and a high school student body of about 250, I can’t fathom the enduring grief across Tishomingo and the damage to the memories and psyches of classmates, friends, family and everyone who knew and loved these victims ranging in age from 15 to 17.

So many of us Arkansans can relate in a rural state peppered with communities the same size where everyone knows everyone else and their children, especially girls old enough to drive to local teen hangouts and merchants where they were well-known.

News accounts say the girls had crammed into a small Chevrolet Spark designed to hold four at the most. Only two wore seat belts, according to The Associated Press.

I’m only surmising, but I doubt any of these young ladies had the slightest inkling there would be any problem from just running up the road a mile or so for lunch. Instead, I visualize these friends piling in atop each other, laughing and carrying on one minute, as teens do. Then gone the next. Isn’t that often how these horrors occur in this brief and uncertain lifetime we share?

No one believes their next jog just up the street will lead to their final moments on Earth.

Instead, six promising lives instantly snuffed out by one misjudgment at a highway intersection, the kind of mistake most of us likely make over our lifetimes, thankfully minus such tragedy.

The male driver of the semi-trailer truck was reported to be uninjured. As I write, the collision that literally ripped the roof and doors from the flimsy car remained under investigation.

Regardless of who is found at fault, these young ladies who had their potential for productive lives spread before them like budding flowers at sunrise are forever gone.

That also was the case when, the week before, nine people died in Texas when a truck reportedly driven by a 13-year-old along a rural expanse of highway crossed the centerline and slammed into a passenger van carrying a university golf team from New Mexico.

Fifteen dead in a week’s time on the highways where younger drivers were behind the wheel.

Parents of teenagers who drive would be wise to call these horrible accidents to their attention as a cautionary and sobering reminder of how unexpectedly and quickly fatal accidents can and do occur.

Truth versus propaganda

So I’m reading along the other day when I came across a story about veteran Russian broadcast journalist Zhanna Agalakova quitting her job on Russian television.

It seems she resigned in protest over how that country manipulates its media into favoring the government’s positions and never questioning it even when questions are obviously necessary. She refused to remain a mouthpiece and useful idiot for the government and its constant stream of politicized propaganda. Here’s what she said.

“We have come to a point when on TV, on the news, we’re seeing the story of only one person or the group of people around him,” Agalakova said. “All we see are those in power. In our news, we don’t have the country. In our news, we don’t have Russia. …

“My reports didn’t contain lies, but that’s exactly how propaganda works. You take reliable facts, mix them up, and a big lie comes together. Facts are true, but their mix is propaganda.”

Decide for yourself if you see similarities with much of our own national mainstream media’s performance today when it comes to reporting objectively and fairly in the public (not government’s) interest as opposed to regularly proffering protection for the elites and propaganda. Potentially devastating financial and political material on Hunter Biden’s laptop leaps to mind.

Found box

Well, valued readers, a previously lost box containing my CD of 14 timeless columns I recorded in Fayetteville a while back has turned up during spring cleaning.

So if you didn’t get one earlier, I’m still giving them away; all I ask is $5 to cover postage. Strikes me that’s better than having them remain buried in the back of the closet, right? Those interested can write me at 1002 West Bunn Ave., Harrison, AR. 72601. Those not interested need not do a thing.

And for the folks who already have one, why not drop me an email and share your thoughts if your $5 was well spent?