Unexpectedly expected

“I used to build my life on the expected.”

I’m not quite sure what that sentence even means, but it popped into my head this morning on my walk. This is my trying to process and understand it through my favorite medium; writing.

Why do expectations haunt me in this lifetime? I am still figuring that out. But when something continuously shows up in my life, I know it is part of my karmic journey to unravel all the layers of it. It feels as though I’ve been peeling layers off this thing called expectations for ages now and I am so far from the center of it.

Expectations have been my kryptonite the past few years (probably more accurately, my entire life.) and also, my greatest teacher. I’m sure I’ve said it before but I can still remember when my yoga teacher first shared the following bit of wisdom.

The gap between expectations and reality is where suffering exists.

I’ve never been great at existing in the plane of reality. Perhaps this is why life has always felt surreal to me in many ways. I have always lived in the space of my own expectations aka my own version of reality.

Some of us are past oriented and others future. I have always lived with one foot in the future. It has always been calming to me to use my gift of pattern recognition to predict what is to come. I like when I can know what to expect. It feels safe to me. Because it feels safe to me, I learned to cling to expectations. No matter what reality occurred below, my expectations kept me afloat. Or did they?!

As I get more acquainted with my own mind, I am learning to soften my hold on my expectations. I am learning that expectations are not reality and never will be, even when they do come true. This is not an easy lesson to learn when so much of my life has reinforced the opposite. Again, good pattern recognition means my expectations did become reality often. Every time this still happens, it reinforces the idea that I can control the outcome, which is one of the greatest lies my mind tries to tell me.

As I was reflecting on what 2025 gifted me, one word kept tumbling into my awareness. Unexpected. This felt odd but also incredibly true. A lot of what unfolded in 2025 was unexpected in many ways, personally and collectively. The most interesting part for me was this understanding that unexpected was not a negative thing. This neutrality around the word unexpected felt strangely novel to me.

Past versions of myself would crumble any time something unexpected happened. Again, I used to build my life on the expected. I was always a creature of habit and consistency. I loved to create stability in my life by having rigid routines in place. This rigidity feels safe to me in many ways. When I have a routine, I know what to expect. When I know what to expect, it feels as though reality and my expectations align. Aka, I suffer less.

In a way, I’ve always known this gap between expectation and reality is the cause of suffering. I attempted to control the suffering out of my life by creating a reality that met my expectations. This can work for a while but the truth is, we cannot control this reality. Eventually, life begins to get lifey and we lose the ability to control it. We can either accept this and adjust our expectations or we can swim in the never ending sea of suffering that shows up if we cling to our expectations.

I have swam long enough in the gap between expectations and reality and I might finally be ready to swim out of this place of self induced suffering.

To shift out of a way of being that has served me for most of my life, for better or worse, is not an easy thing to do. It feels like a visceral gut punch to alter the way I interact with this space. It has become a big practice in discerning between discomfort and threat in my body.

Not all things that are uncomfortable are unsafe and sometimes safety doesn’t feel comfortable. I see it all the time, in myself and others, this confusion between safety and comfort. I could spend hours info dumping about the physiology that creates this confusion in our being but I’m not sure that is the point of what I’m working on conveying.

What I am getting to is, letting go of expectations feels incredibly uncomfortable for me. When my safety has always derived from creating these expectations and making sure they become reality, releasing this way of being feels destabilizing. To not have expectations feels dangerous to me. I must predict what is to come, so I can prepare properly and win at life. Well, well, well…welcome back perfectionism and control!

Because truly, there is no winning at life. There is no right way to do things. There is no path that is set before you that you must stay on to survive. Life has constantly been teaching me that the future is nothing but endless possibilities. Perfection does not exist, it is an illusion of our mind. Just like expectations. They are never real, even when they do come to fruition.

But is it possible to eradicate expectations from our lives? I don’t believe so. Again, expectations are a sort of comfort for me. I don’t care to rid my life of them. That feels far to uncomfortable in the moment. I am learning to appreciate my future oriented mind without letting it fully control how I experience the present. For me, the work lies in allowing expectations to exist but holding them gently. It is a remembering that expectations are illusions of our own creation and not something to build a life upon.

In yogic terms, this is vairagya, or detachment. One of those concepts that is so easy to intellectualize but so fucking hard to embody. To release attachment to expectations, to let them exist but not cling, is so far from simple. Especially in a world that constantly pushes us towards attachment. The annoying thing is that detachment is not something we do, it is something that simply happens.

As I reflected on 2025 and this concept of unexpected popped up, I was quite surprised. Does that mean I let go of expectations and simply let life flow? Not exactly. But I do believe it is a brief glimpse of what it feels like when I detach from outcomes. I will admit, this fills me with pride. I know how much practice and effort I have consistently put towards this. Sometimes, things like this sneak up on us in the best of ways.

I am still full of expectations. My mind still drifts into the future far more than I care to admit. But if all my expectations were dogs, I have decided to let go of the leashes and let each of them wander as they please. Instead of death gripping all the leashes, attempting to control each dog and feeling strained under the effort, I release control.

It requires a lot of trust to soften my grip on each leash. Trust in myself, in each dog and in the universe. That the dogs that are meant to be in my life will remain close. And the dogs that weren’t quite right for me will wander away and find a new home. I suppose I realized this year that I would rather let go of the leash than be constantly struggling to control something that isn’t meant for me. In a way, this is simply me minimizing the gap between expectations and reality.

I’ve lived so much of my life struggling to control all the leashes of expectations, it feels radically different to let each expectation roam freely. The imagery of walking a pack of dogs on leashes vs hiking freely along side of them is powerful for me. I viscerally feel the ease return to my body. This is what it feels like when detachment happens. It is not about getting rid of expectations, it is about allowing expectations to exist freely in the wild.

Perhaps when this first happens, when we first learn to drop the leashes and stop fighting under the strain of control, everything feels unexpected. It is the pleasant surprise of reality and expectations meeting in real life. In a way that feels aligned rather than forced. Because control is always an illusion and attachment is where resistance and suffering exist. When we allow ourselves to loosen our grip, life will unfold exactly as it is meant to.

I am so incredibly grateful that I’ve been led down a path towards detachment. That life can become unexpectedly expected and this brings me joy rather than frustration and fear. I hope I can continue to carry this practice into 2026. The practice of softening my grip and cultivating more trust will carrying me gently into this next year.