Thursday, March 13, 1997
HOPE:
Uncertainties of life can sabotage even the best-laid plansAh,
March is here, and the men’s basketball team goes off to yet
another tournament appearance. As always, expectations are high.
But why shouldn’t they be? After all, we’re UCLA, and hoops is our
thing. Besides, everybody knows that other than our registration
fees, the basketball program pays the school’s bills.
People’s expectations never fail to interest me. Some are common
and run along familiar, well-traveled roads: "I expect to do well
on the next exam." "I expect to have enough money to pay the rent."
"I expect the weather to be sunny and warm tomorrow" (for Southern
Californians). Other expectations are hopeful and even border on
the fanciful: "I expect to be famous." "I expect the weather to be
cold and cloudy tomorrow" (for Southern Californians). "I expect to
graduate in four years."
Personally, I’ve found that if I keep my expectations as low as
possible, then I will rarely suffer disappointment. While I don’t
believe in high expectations, I do think that one should have hope
and, yes, there is a difference between hope and expectation. My
Webster’s Dictionary defines "hope" as "to want very much" while it
describes "expect" as "to look for as likely to occur or
appear."
We need hope as an incentive to keep on living. Otherwise, a
lack of ambition or desire to achieve anything will render our
lives meaningless and moot. We work and study because of hope. For
example, I currently spend large amounts of my conscious time
studying because I hope one day to have a well-paying job and a
comfortable life.
However, I don’t necessarily expect either of these two things
to happen despite my hours of hard work. Many unforeseeable events
can occur to derail my life from its carefully planned route. I
could get run over by a car on my way to school tomorrow. The Big
One could hit the San Andreas fault line and I could be smashed
like one of the many cockroaches in my apartment as buildings
topple on top of me. I might even decide to drop out of school in a
year.
Whatever the scenario, high expectations are generally a direct
route to disappointment. Ask my parents. When my older brother
graduated as valedictorian of his high school class, I knew I was
in for a long four years at Ocean View High School. I thought my
parents would place similar expectations on me. During my arduous
but occasionally happy high school campaign, I maintained a strict
academic work ethic and also managed to hang out with some cool
friends. Yet, I continued to dwell in the shadow of my brother’s
reputation as high expectations haunted me incessantly. Some
teachers were still calling me by my brother’s name after my
freshman year. Alas, by the time my graduation rolled around, I had
secured the No. 2 spot in my class (though ranks and such don’t
really indicate true intelligence or intellectual competence, but
that’s another issue altogether). In the end, I was happy. I
studied with the hope of doing well academically. Realistically, I
expected nothing. In fact, I expected less than nothing. I expected
to graduate in the back of the line with the guys who took auto
shop for several quarters in a row. At graduation, my meager
expectations from the previous four years only compounded with my
joy to make it that much greater.
Surprisingly, my parents did not expect me to follow exactly in
my brother’s footsteps. Breaking the traditional stereotype of the
slave-driver Asian parents, they admitted that they had expected
nothing out of me but my best effort. Their gentle words were
reminiscent of an Afterschool Special "parent speech." But by that
time, our cliched conversation was redundant because I was already
happy regardless of anyone else’s reaction. Perhaps my parents
realized early on that I wasn’t up to par with my "perfect" brother
and lowered the expectation scale for me. Although they didn’t
lower it as much as I did, they were not disappointed in the
end.
A motto that runs through my mind periodically is "hope for the
best, expect the worst." A friend of mine used to say it whenever
uncertainty in life hovered near. When he turned in a paper he
wasn’t sure was all that great, he’d say "hope for the best, expect
the worst."
When he turned in a college application after the deadline, he’d
say, "Hope for the best, expect the worst." When he took a girl he
didn’t like to the prom, he’d say … well, you get the point.
Yet low expectations do not pertain only to life’s
uncertainties. I’ve found that high expectations in presumably the
most certain facets of life have let me down. Chance, ill fortune
and bad karma have all conspired to ruin various high expectations
in my life. I haven’t given up, though. In the back of my mind, I
nourish a slight glimmer of hope that my life is not as accursed as
I believe it to be. So I study. And I play basketball. And I study
some more. And I watch professional wrestling on television. And I
study some more. What I don’t do is expect anything significantly
positive to happen to me. No, that optimism is reserved for hope.
There’s less emotional risk this way.
As 10th week comes to a close, I have some hopes and
expectations I’d like to end with. I hope that the basketball team
wins another national championship. I don’t expect us to get past
the first round. I hope to have an enjoyable spring break. I expect
to be stuck at home doing chores. I hope to ace all my exams. I
expect mediocre results.
At this point, I should try to be optimistic and wish all the
readers out there good luck on their finals. But that would be
expecting too much.