Live A Freer Life — The Problem With Expectations

Photo by Yasin Yusuf on Unsplash

Have you ever had a hobby that you used to love but do not love anymore?

Maybe you played an instrument or were participating in a sport, but for some reason you fell out of love with it.

Why is that? What changed?

Most of the time we think that we have to do something for a certain reward.

We love another person to gain love for ourselves, we exercise to become fit and healthy, and we work to obtain money or standing or fame or a sense of fulfilment.

Some of us push ourselves so much in this that we loose sight of what matters and what brought us to it in the first place.

It is in this way that many of our hobbies die, that we begin to hate our jobs and that we even fall out of love with people.

We loose so much of life and so many things within it because we expect something in return.

Now, if you give someone your attention and love then maybe you do expect something back, which seems like a totally legitimate thing to expect, why give something for nothing?

We invest time and energy into our hobbies in the hopes that they bring us joy and fulfillment of some kind.