Great Expectations?

As I struggle to adjust to this new stage in my life, I’m finding myself thinking, or perhaps overthinking about expectations. Everyone has them, both for themselves and for others. Expectations define a lot of the paths we choose in life. They define what school we go to, what career we study, what job we take. And let’s not even talk about relationships. We never start one without expecting anything less that everything.

In Dickens’ seminal novel, the expectations refer to “a legacy to come”, meaning money. Wealth and the opportunities it seemingly grants are a central theme in the novel. However, and as protagonist Pip soon learns, riches do not a gentleman make. And not even all the money in the world can fulfill our greatest expectations.

But the expectations in the novel go beyond the monetary. Pip longs for Estella, who in turn longs for nothing but revenge. They have both been put on a path that neither fully understands, yet are expected to follow. And the more they venture into the path, the more they realize just how utterly unprepared they are for it. Everything they expected would happen fails to materialize, leaving them no different than when they began.

This could be life in a nutshell. Isn’t this true for all of us? How many of us start a new class, a new relationship, a new job expecting for everything, only to discover our minds have once again set the bar too high for our realities? Are expectations secretly the enemy that’s working against us, preventing us from truly embracing the challenges of life? And if they truly our enemies, can we ever overcome them?

Perhaps expectations aren’t the problem, but rather us and our own misinterpretation of them. Like Pip and Estella, perhaps we’re just misreading the signs. Maybe what we expect isn’t what we should be expecting. Maybe we should let go of our own preconceived notions of what we want and start focusing what we need.

All of us have, at one point or another, dreamed of having it all: a great job, a wonderful apartment, a loving family life and a passionate relationship. And in our minds, we have painted a picture of how that should look like. Where the apartment should be, how our lover should look. Are we setting ourselves for failure by painting an image that’s impossible to achieve? Maybe, in order to truly have it all we need to let go of how we think it should look like, and accept it for how it actually does.

That begs the question: should we actually lower our expectations? Is that the real meaning of maturity or is it just settling? With the line so blurry between the two, it’s hard to be comfortable with a decision in this matter. But unless we’re strong enough to really be at peace with our decision, is the path of least resistance really the best one?

The original ending of the novel was much more bittersweet: a still single Pip briefly sees Estella in London, remarried. Seeing her somewhat softened, perhaps even kinder, gives Pip a sense of peace and closure, even though he admits the two will never end together. Here, eleven years later, Pip has finally let go of his expectation and come to admit the hand life has dealt him. An unhappy outcome for all terms and purposes, but a consistent one.

However, and at the urge of several of his friends, Dickens revised the ending into the one that we all know. Pip and Estella reunite at the ruins of Satis house, the place that saw the birth of their connection. The novel ends with the vague suggestion that the two will indeed end up together, even if we, the reader, don’t get to see it.

This is the sort of ending, we’ve come to expect: a happy, traditional one, albeit inconsistent with everything we’ve read so far. And despite our knowledge that the original ending makes more sense and might be what happens in real life, we’re content to accept the second one, because it fits with out picture-perfect view of how things should end.

What can we learn from both versions of Pip’s conclusion? In the first one, he grows, develops and comes to accept things for how they are. He gives into his reality and comes out on the other end of a dark path, victorious but without Estella. In the second one, Pip’s hope proves triumphant as he sees his expectations come to pass. His patience is rewarded and our reading experience, fulfilled, even if the ending doesn’t feel quite right.

Expectations, then, are a friendly foe that we need to survive in life. Sure, they can be treacherous and deceiving, but they also keep us guessing, fighting. We, like Pip, need a light at the end of the tunnel to keep us from giving up midway. And whether that light is our great expectations, or some somewhat more achievable ones, it’s still something to look forward to.