I've heard this being said like a billion times by most of the elders around me, but experience taught me this lesson, just a couple of hours back. This might just get a bit too philosophical, but please bear with me!Purely a work of fiction, bears no resemblance to any emotion existing or non-existing. No offence intended.
Expectation leads to disappointment...
I'm such a spoilt brat that 'no' is the word i have rarely heard. Owing to this phenomenon in my life, never has it happened that i have not received what I've expected. God also added to this miserable plight of mine by bestowing me with amazing brains. Hence i turned out to be pretty brilliant in the academic arena and even there, my expectations seldom failed to yield.
Now comes the twist in my misery. There entered an anomaly into my life, which decided, that 'no' must be the only word that i must hear henceforth. So, this lead to a drastic change in my till now miserable boring yet beautiful life. I was forced to hear that two letter word as often as a zillion times every nanosecond. I was doomed. I wished that I'd be blessed with Surya's case of short term memory loss, so that i forgot the negations i was being subjected to. But again the divine intervention had other plans. HE, unfortunately gave me a brilliant super cool memory which a super computer would kill to acquire. I was condemned to remember every single instance that i had been denied something.
This lead to me leaving the company of my senses every time this wretched word was uttered. I began losing my temper every time i heard it. My Anger was forever ready to gobble up unsuspecting people who refused to satisfy my horde of expectations. But, whenever i felt anger, i felt drained, tired, lost and even guilty at times. It was a scary situation for a person of my calibre and intelligence. This anger, guilt, loss of energy, built up so much tension in me, that i finally burst and ended up in the dumps of disappointment. Disappointed with everything that was happening. Finally, even disappointed with disappointment itself.
Then it struck me. Its all the fault of these expectations. Too much of thought and energy had been channelised into forming and again deforming expectations and hence according to the laws governing the transfer of energies, the anger, guilt and loss of energy were the outcomes, finally ending in disappointment. So, the root cause of my entire misery was the expectation, i decided to ask it to take the boot. It wasn't leading me anyplace, but was just propelling me deeper and deeper into the dungeons of disappointment. This acted like a seat under the Bodhi tree, and realisation finally dawned.
Get rid of expectation from your dictionary and along with it no, anger, guilt, energy loss and disappointment too will gleefully walk out.