Of Expectations and Other Demons

Expectations are an elegant form of self-deception.

They are born with a noble appearance. They present themselves as confidence, as faith in others, as a gesture of goodwill towards the world. But with time, one discovers that expectations are nothing more than private stories we write in our heads about people who never read the script. That's where the problem begins. We utter phrases that seem almost childishly innocent: "I certainly didn't expect that" or "I would never have done that."

But behind these phrases lies something much deeper and more dangerous: the silent conviction that others should act according to our own moral code. As if life were a clean mirror where everyone reflects what they believe is right. But life doesn't work that way. People are not imperfect versions of ourselves. They don't think like us, they don't feel like us, they don't react like us. And yet, we spend years constructing an idea of who they are, what they would do, what they would never do. The error is not in them. The error is in the movie we project onto their faces.

Over the years, one builds a small world of expectations: about partners, about friends, about family, about the loyalties we believe are evident. And that world works well... as long as no one contradicts it. Until one day someone does exactly what we swore they would never do. Then the blow comes. Not because the act is necessarily monstrous, but because it breaks the script. The mind short-circuits. Surprise turns into rage. Rage into disappointment; and disappointment into something deeper: a crack in the way we understood that person. That's where the demons appear. Not the demons of the other, but the demons of our own expectations. Those that whisper to us that the world should have been different, that certain people should have lived up to the story we silently wrote for them. But no one signed that contract. That's the brutal point that is hard to accept: others have no obligation to be the version we imagine them to be. Neither friends. Nor family. Nor the people we love.

The world is full of disappointments that stem not from malice, but from something simpler: the difference between what we expected and what they actually were. There, right there, appears the only possible way out: to stop expecting. Not as a cynical gesture, but as an act of lucidity. When one stops demanding that others fulfill expectations they never promised, something changes. People cease to be characters in our moral novel and become what they always were: human beings, contradictory, imperfect, capable of noble gestures and unexpected miseries. That doesn't prevent pain. But it prevents surprise.

Expectations are dangerous because they make the world smaller than it is. They reduce it to our own rules, to our own limits, to our own illusions of coherence. The world—for better or worse—never promised so much. That's why this text is not an accusation. It is a silent dedication to all those who once broke an expectation that I myself created. People who, unknowingly, taught me something uncomfortable but essential: that the real problem was never what they did... but what I believed they would never do. When one understands that, a part of naivety disappears. One doesn't become wiser. Just more observant.

It is worth adding something more, so that there is no comfortable impression that I speak from an immaculate morality. No. I have failed in almost perfect ways. I have hurt. I have said things I shouldn't have said and done things I shouldn't have done. But when I understood that I had crossed a line, I cried. I spoke. I screamed. I asked for forgiveness. I knelt down—metaphorically and literally—before some people to try to mend what I had broken. There I discovered something even more disturbing. For certain types of people, another's fragility does not awaken compassion. It awakens instinct. It's as if there's an invisible sensor that detects when someone is down. When that happens, far from stopping, some feel the temptation to finish them off. To humiliate a little more. To recall the fall. To press where it already hurts. As if forgiveness were a weakness that deserves punishment.

Inevitably, I tell myself: if what I did had been done to me, I surely would have hated it. It would have hurt me. It would have angered me. But even so—and I say this with absolute certainty—I would never have enjoyed crushing someone who was already defeated. That's where the reflection becomes uncomfortable. To understand that human beings don't always need reasons to do evil. Often, the opportunity is enough. The harm appears with an unsettling, almost instinctive naturalness, as if it were programmed into some primitive part of one's character. But to ask that same human being for a minimal gesture of kindness, a shred of chivalry, a simple act of goodness... a small pause before crushing someone who is already on the ground. You will see how extraordinary that is. Not because they can't do it, but because they don't want to.

That is perhaps the most bitter lesson of all: it is not wickedness that surprises. Wickedness is predictable. What is truly rare—what is truly extraordinary—is to find someone who, having the opportunity to destroy, chooses not to.

Not everyone is like that, some will say. Probably. But a few are enough for the lesson to be learned. That's why, over the years, one begins to prefer certain quieter, more honest, more predictable companions.

Inevitably, a simple, plain, but profoundly accurate truth is stamped on my face, and I'm not saying it, Arthur Schopenhauer said it, or, in other versions, Lord Byron: the more I know human beings, the more I appreciate the company of my dogs.

I must admit something that, from the outside, might seem like another eccentricity in this small treatise against human expectations. In recent years, I have found myself, without consciously deciding it, having quite serious conversations with my two little dogs—two tiny Chihuahuas who, fortunately for me, have no moral or philosophical pretensions. Sometimes I talk to them about life, I ask them questions, I even rehearse reflections that I probably wouldn't dare to formulate in front of many people. They don't respond with speeches or judgments; they respond with their gaze, with a slight shake of their head, with that quiet presence that only little dogs know how to offer. The curious thing is that, on more than one occasion, I have had the feeling that they understand perfectly what I say. They don't promise moral grandeur. They don't talk about loyalty: they practice it. They don't build expectations only to break them. They are just there; and sometimes—after knowing people too well—that is enough. At least for me.

There is no happy ending here. No hopeful ending. Not even one of those lukewarm endings where one promises to learn something. That ended years ago. I have failed, I have hurt, and I have betrayed some people. I don't deny that. But I have also cried, I have asked for forgiveness, I have talked until I ran out of words. I have tried to mend what I could mend; and in that process, I discovered something I can no longer ignore. When one kneels to ask for forgiveness, some do not see repentance. They see opportunity. The opportunity to recall the fall, to press a little harder, to humiliate a little more, to enjoy momentary superiority. There are people for whom another's fragility does not awaken compassion. It awakens instinct.

I'm not looking for reconciliations or promises. Nor am I seeking redemption before anyone. I write this for myself, to close an internal account that had been open for too long. Not because I expect something from those who read it. On the contrary. I write it because I have learned something that I find impossible to forget: the problem is not the people who silently disappointed me, but the absurd idea that human beings were going to be better than they are.

Perhaps the only honest way to move forward is to accept that and take a step back. Not to disappear physically from the world, although the desire is there. But to disappear from expectations, from unnecessary closeness, from loyalties that break so easily. Because there is a silent way to protect oneself: to stop betting on people. To learn, finally, to live without expecting them.