Tag: sacrifice

Management of Expectations

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If you have been following, you will have noticed I missed a week. I was incredibly busy and delayed in writing, but when the opportunity arose to write, I thought it might be best to delay further. Normally, I would write tomorrow, but I thought today made more sense. Ironically, all of this leads well into my discussion for today. What I often call the management of expectations.

For you, my dear reader, it is best if I keep to a schedule. That way, you know what to expect from me. If I meet your expectations, then you are (generally) not disappointed by me, as my posts will appear when you predict they ought to appear. This will make me reliable in your eyes. If I don’t keep to my schedule, as I did this past week, then you may be disappointed, and then you may also lose trust it me. In this case, I become unreliable. It affects our relationship whether I meet your expectations of me.

In my youth, I participated in performing arts. Specifically, I joined an improvisation troupe for a brief period after I had finished high school. To join the troupe, I had to take a basic class on how improve worked and what sorts of games/performances I would be expected to perform. If you’ve ever seen Whose Line Is It Anyway?, then you probably are familiar with the sorts of performances I did. Improvisation, as it turns out, has a lot to do with the management of expectations.

To be successful at improvisation, one must do one seemingly simple thing: lower the expectations of your audience, and then follow it up with doing what comes natural. That’s it. It is a ridiculously simple formula that works incredibly well. If you can reduce the expectations of your audience, then they will be impressed by almost anything. This is why improve troupes often go to the audience to ask for ideas in their performances; by asking the audience for ideas, the audience typically believes that the performance that is about to follow will be much more difficult, as the performers have had no opportunity to prepare for what the are about to do. Without appropriate preparation, acting out a coherent scene seems impossible. However, the performers listen to the audience’s suggestions and then create an often wacky scene that frequently impresses that same audience.

Of course there are those performers who are not as good at this sort of play. If the performers do not actually follow or use the audience’s suggestions, or if the scene is too far fetched, then the performance may lack the impressive qualities that one might expect. Again, it is all about those expectations. What we anticipate in contrast to what we actually behold.

Life, I have found, is much like an improvisational performance. Those around me are my audience, in a sense, though they tend to be as much a part of my performance as I am of theirs. However, much like the improve audience, those around me have expectations of me. Like this blog, my readers will probably expect that I will post once a week, and usually on Sundays, because I have created this expectation by the frequency of my past posts. As I had indicated at the beginning, my audience will probably be affected by my ability to maintain that expectation.

While I do believe it is important to manage the expectations of others in this world, where this idea really becomes important (in my opinion) is when applied to one’s self. Managing one’s own expectations. I use the above examples and explanation in order to try to make clear what has to happen, but it isn’t so much about how we manage the expectations of others that is important, as much as how we manage our own for our selves. This is how management of expectations ties in very closely with the struggle and sacrifice I was talking about in my past few posts.

Managing one’s own expectations is a challenging thing. In some sense, it is nonsensical entirely. After all, I simple expect what I expect, don’t I? How can I alter my expectations? In the part of the world where I live, expectations of the self are rather high. It seems to me that most people are very concerned with taking the greatest advantage in all situations. What I often refer to as the bigger, better deal. (I did not coin this term; it has been around for a very long time, and I do not know its actual source.) The bigger, better deal, or BBD, is the mindset one adopts when they are constantly looking for some way to improve their situation. If one has a car, one is always looking around for a faster or fancier car. If one has a computer, one is always looking for a faster or better performing computer. In relationships, the BBD is quite insidious, as most people seem entirely unsatisfied with their partners, always gazing around them for a better partner. This last issue is incredibly problematic I find.

As I see it, the BBD mindset is inappropriate to adopt in all situations. It may be helpful in a limited number of situations, such as when I am shopping around for the best computer to purchase given my circumstances. However, it is entirely inappropriate when selecting a partner in life, whether romantically or even professionally. I will address my viewpoint on interpersonal relationships in a future post; for now I will simply say that BBD is incompatible with interpersonal relationships. A different strategy needs to be adopted when dealing with people in that way.

An alternative mindset to hold is one where I am satisfied with what I have. Those around me often refer to this as settling for a thing. The term settling has a negative connotation, and so I prefer not to use that term. What I have in mind is an acceptance in what I have, allowing me to gain the most enjoyment and satisfaction from whatever it is, often in the present. This is related to “living in the now,” or “living in the present,” to share a phrase that is often used. To be satisfied with today. To be able to take enjoyment with today, instead of worrying about possible futures. If I am always worrying about the future, I never spend time enjoying what I do have here an now.

To manage my expectations properly, I need to be able to be satisfied with what I have, here and now. Not absolutely everything, but enough. I live in a home with various deficiencies. There are holes in the walls in places, the floors are not perfectly flat, I have no air conditioning and the weather has been rather hot lately. I can work toward improving these deficiencies in the future, but I can also enjoy my home for what it does offer me. It provides me shade from the hot sun on a day like today. My home also allows me to sit here and write this blog to you, and I can be happy that I have this opportunity. I am in a committed relationship with my partner, and I can be happy that I have that too.

It isn’t always easy to accept the things I have. There are certainly times when I want more. However, I don’t actually need more most of the time. And sometimes, getting that more results in a decrease in my happiness instead of an increase. Food is the best example I have of this. I tend to always be hungry. I would eat pretty well all the time if I could. However, when given the opportunity to eat as much as I can, I tend to overdo it. I tend to eat until I am unable to eat any more, and then I feel bloated and very uncomfortable for hours afterward. The satisfaction at stuffing my face full of tasty food is lost by excruciating hours of dissatisfaction. Clearly, in this particular situation, for me, more is definitely not better. I have had to learn to be satisfied with much less food, and I have had to learn to not eat just because I can. I can enjoy some tasty food, and then stop myself from going too far. I can be satisfied with enough, and learn to accept the perceived lack that follows. Or, I can recognize that the perceived lack is just that, perceived. I am not actually lacking anything. The loss is all in my mind.

This also applies with types of foods. I learned a long time ago that some foods tasted very good when I ate them, but then made me feel like crap afterward. For example, potato chips and Cheezies taste quite good when I eat them, but leave me feeling sluggish and heavy shortly afterward. However, there are other foods that are the opposite. For example, when I eat Kashi Go Lean cereal, the original cereal and not any of the plethora of other varieties available, I find that eating the cereal isn’t terribly exciting and the taste is not all that great, but for the rest of the day I feel much, much better. In other words, some activities I engage in have an instant gratification, and others have a gratification that follows, and sometimes I am lucky to find something that can satisfy both, like eating an apple or a pear. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of expectations as it relates to food that I believe is the cause of obesity in North America, as well as the adoption of the BBD with food.

Understanding how food works, and therefore recognizing what I ought to expect from my food, helps me to make better decisions and live a happier life. I understand that I cannot simply eat anything I want simply because it happens to taste good in the moment, because I expect that I will feel like crap later. Or, I expect that eating that Kashi cereal will result in a benefit to myself later. A non-food example like this is exercise. Exercising is not generally an enjoyable activity in itself. Exercising means pushing myself to do difficult things. However, if I push myself and do those difficult things, later I can enjoy a stronger body that looks much nicer as well.

Looking at this in the other direction, if I do not understand how food works, and I do not recognize the effects that it will have, then I will be left disappointed. If I think that eating all those Cheezies will make me feel good, without the feeling of sluggishness afterward, then I am disappointed later when I feel sluggish. In other words, I need to have appropriate expectations of the situations I put myself into. I cannot expect things to be better than they actually will be. This is often brought about by a lack of information, or misinformation. This is likely why I have such a significant distrust of marketing and advertising, and sales in general, as most of the time those activities lead to a lack of information or misinformation. The opposite situation occurs to what the aim of improvisation is; instead of the audience’s expectations being lowered, the audience’s expectations are raised and then when the performer/sales person does what comes natural, the audience is disappointed.

To be happy in this life, it tends to be helpful not to have such high expectations. If my expectations are low, then I will be impressed and happy with what the world offers me. On the other hand, if my expectations are high, then I will be disappointed by what I find in the world. This again seems like a simple situation and a simple solution to happiness, but as with all things there is much more to the story. After all, why would millions of people adopt a mindset like BBD then? It is often argued that having those higher expectations is what motivates people to try and make an effort at projects. Is there a situation where one can have low expectations and yet still be motivated to their projects?

Struggle and Sacrifice

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I’ve discussed sacrifice, and how it is a transaction where one gives up a thing of value for another thing of value (hopefully the thing gained has greater value than the thing given up). And I’ve discussed struggle, and how it is the process that generates (or reveals) value. Now I will discuss how these two ideas work together, and why this is important to me.

Both struggle and sacrifice deal with the valuation of things. Those things can be tangible, such as the value of my car or my home; or they can be intangible, such as the relationship I have with a friend or acquaintance. I personally follow the line of thought the Existentialists followed with regard to intrinsic value; that is, I do not believe anything has intrinsic value, and that all value is assigned by some sort of agent. Furthermore, I believe that the value assigned by a particular agent is not necessarily the same as the value assigned by another, different agent, when both agents are talking about the same thing. Whether intrinsic value exists or not is a long, ongoing debate by many people in our world; this post is not intended to engage with that debate. It should be enough for my reader to understand my position, and therefore why struggle and sacrifice are so important to me.

If it is not clear by now, all of these ideas revolve around the idea of value. It may be helpful to briefly discuss what value is. Value, as I understand it, is a measure of the willingness one has to submit their personal time and effort into a thing. That is, the more personal time and effort one is willing to put into something, the more value that thing has to that person. For example, if I am willing to sit at this table and spend time and effort in writing this blog post, then I am expressing or revealing that I value this blog in some way. The more time and effort I put into this blog, the more valuable the blog is to me. If I decide I’m more interested in playing a video game or making lunch, then playing that video game or making lunch likely are more valuable to me. If I forego playing the video game in favor of writing this blog, then the blog is more valuable to me. In other words, those things I decide to invest my time and effort in are the things I consider most valuable to me. This now touches on the idea of freedom.

In some sense, I need to be free in order to decide what to spend my time and effort on. That freedom is how I can assign or reveal the value in things, at least from my view point. I must be free to decide which things I will spend my time on in order to assign or reveal value. If I am not free to decide what I will spend my time on, then it is no longer an expression of valuation. For example, when I am employed with a company, and I perform duties as part of my employment, those activities are not necessarily valuable to me. My deciding to fulfill my duties reveals the value of my employment with the company, but does not reveal the value in the activity itself. As those who have worked “bullshit jobs” may already recognize, there are times when I consider the work I’ve been asked to do to hold very little if any value at all. (Consider the situation where I am working an eight hour shift at a job, and I have been asked to clean the floor of a room. Upon completing the task the first time, if I have done so in less than the eight hours of my shift, my boss may ask me to clean it again. I may argue that the floor is already clean, but my boss may insist I still clean it a second time, as he wishes me to work for the entire eight hour period. This is often referred to as a “make work project.”)

The point being made here is that I need to be free to decide what I spend my time on, or where I place my effort, in order to reveal or assign value in a thing. However, it isn’t necessarily clear what the thing is that I am assigning value to. When I help a friend clean their apartment, is it the act of cleaning that I value, or is it the relationship with my friend that I value, or perhaps a combination of both things and of others. Valuation can become quite complicated very quickly. In all situations, I still need to be free to decide for myself in order to assign or reveal value.

Tying this all together, when I struggle, I am assigning or revealing value in a thing. To struggle, for me, is how I generate value in this world. Sacrifice is when I purposely struggle and then release that thing of value for something of greater value. For example, as an employee for a company, I may struggle to perform my duties, revealing the value I hold in my employment, and then sacrifice my hard work for a paycheck that I will then later sacrifice for food and other things. I struggle to create something of value, that I then sacrifice in order to gain things of greater value (to me) that I likely would not be able to struggle for myself.

An example of something I may not be able to struggle for myself directly is a house. While it is true I could spend my time and effort building a house, it is likely not something I will ever do myself. For one, my skills are generally not in the areas of construction. Also, in order to accomplish the many other things I need to accomplish, such as feeding myself, it may be inappropriate to spend so much time on my shelter. Instead, I choose to spend my time on fixing computers and helping people in other ways, generating income for myself. With time, I can accumulate enough wealth that I can sacrifice in exchange for a house that others have built, typically also involving some sort of financial institution whom I will have to beg for a loan from. A rather complicated transaction with many different parts, but clearly one where I am unable (or unwilling) to struggle myself directly for the house, instead struggling on other things and then sacrificing in order to accomplish my aim of a house.

There is much more I could say on this topic, but this is likely enough for my reader for now. Recognizing the transactional nature of my free choices in order to accomplish my projects is a big deal, as I see it. It is also why when I work a job for a company, I have learned not to get too caught up in the duties I am asked to perform. Within reason, of course. If I am asked to do tasks that I consider unethical, I may reveal the value of my ethics by declining such duties. However, if I am asked to clean the floor a second, and sometimes third time, even though I know that the floor is already clean, I can reveal how I value my employment and my relationship with my boss more than rubbing a wet mop across the floor.

Sacrifice

crimsonLeave a comment

My father told me that he was trying to set up my life such that I would never need to sacrifice. Ever. When I started talking about sacrificing, it upset him a great deal. It was as if he had failed as a parent or something. He believed I should never sacrifice, and I was telling him I thought it was necessary to sacrifice. Perhaps we were simply in the middle of a great miscommunication.

Sacrifice can mean a number of things. In this post, I am not referring to taking a chicken or a goat and slaughtering it to appease some pagan god. However, what I have in mind is possibly still related in some way. For my father, to sacrifice is to give something up. Not just to give up anything though; it has to be something I consider valuable. The more valuable that something is to me, the greater the sacrifice if I am to give it up. Conversely, if the thing holds no value to me, then it is not a sacrifice to give it up. So a significant aspect of sacrifice is value.

Why a person might sacrifice is not always clear. Often, one makes a sacrifice in order to gain something else they may consider more valuable. In the case of sacrificing a chicken, the person sacrificing the chicken likely holds great value in the chicken, as a source of food for his or her family. However, it may be for a thing of greater value; the sacrifice might be in order to convince their god to provide favorable conditions to grow their crops, or perhaps to keep their ships safe while travelling in the Aegean Sea. The person is giving up one thing of value for another. So sacrifice can often be a transaction of a sort.

Are there sacrifices that are not of this transactional nature? Can I make a sacrifice without gaining something else of value in the process? It may be argued that when I sacrifice my time when volunteering that I gain nothing in return (that is why it is called volunteering), but others gain something of value from my sacrifice. If considered in isolation by myself, I may sacrifice without gaining anything, but others still gain from my sacrifice, so it seems like the transactional nature still exists.

If I assume that all sacrifices involve some sort of transaction, then it seems like sacrifice is all about giving up one thing for another. And if the sacrifice is an appropriate act, I might assume that the thing being sacrificed is of lesser value than the thing gained from the sacrifice. Are there cases where something of great value is given up for something of lesser value? Again, if looked at from one person’s perspective, this may appear to happen occasionally. When I give up my time (something of great value to me) in order to help someone with moving their furniture (something of little direct value to me), then I seem to have made such an exchange. However, there is a lot going on in that transaction. I may value the relationship with the someone, and helping them may increase the strength of that relationship. So it may not be so simple for me. Furthermore, the value of moving their furniture is of great value to the other person, whereas my time may not be of significant value to them. This assessment of valuation may quickly become difficult to estimate properly.

If we briefly consider a utilitarian argument, as this is a very popular ethical theory these days, perhaps a sacrifice is a good sacrifice if it increases the overall happiness or well being in the world. That is, the thing being given up is producing less happiness than the thing gained in the sacrifice, for all people. So even if I don’t value the thing gained, I can assume that there are others who do. Again, assuming that I am making a good sacrifice, and not a poor sacrifice.

With a bit of an understanding of sacrifice, I now return to my father’s intentions as he expressed them to me in my youth. He did not want me to ever have to sacrifice. But this seems to make no sense. He seems to want me to never give anything up, even if it may offer me something greater as a result. When I pressed him on the issue later, that is indeed what he had in mind. Specifically, he did not want me to ever have to give up anything. He would still be happy for me to gain other things of greater value, so long as I didn’t have to give up anything to get them. He simply wanted me to not have to give up anything.

It took me a while to recognize the flaws in this sort of world view. Most of my life is filled with acts of a transactional nature. I consider my experiences playing Magic: the Gathering (a collectible card game) to be the most significant in teaching me about transactions and valuation, both by playing the game and by trading cards with other players. Within the game, one often has to give up a card in order to gain another card or effect. Those who play the game well have figured out the best times to give up a card, and often the giving up of cards leads to their victory in the game. When trading cards, what seems most important is to find someone who values your card the most (even if you do not) and who values the card you want the least (regardless of the value you are assigning to the card). In other words, it seems more important for me to understand the value others are assigning to things than the value I am assigning to things.

To sum up what I’ve discussed thus far, to sacrifice is to give up something of value for something of greater value. For the sacrifice to be a good sacrifice, I need to give up something of lesser value for something of greater value. The values of the things in question are related to me, but are also related to others. For me to consider a sacrifice good, I need to value the thing given up less than the thing gained. For others to consider a sacrifice good, they need to value the thing given up less than the thing gained. In other words, I may consider something a sacrifice while others do not. I may consider myself a hero (having made a good sacrifice), while others might consider me a villain (having made no sacrifice at all, perhaps even having taken advantage of someone else in the act).

This all seems to suggest that when sacrificing, I ought to consider others, lest I gain a poor reputation.

I disagree with my father’s assessment. One who never gives up anything is a hoarder, and hoarding overwhelms a person after a while. The situation where the things you own end up owning you. But then, one might consider hoarding a sort of sacrifice too; hoarding may be sacrificing sacrificing in order to hold more stuff. This sounds much like begging the question, so I will not dwell on this. I will simply suggest that hoarding is not sacrificing. And with that, hoarding is not a good choice because I need to give up things in order to gain better things.

If it is not clear, during this discussion, the things being given up and the things gained through sacrifice need not be tangible or physical. My time is not something easily grasped, nor is its value easily estimated. Only I can say whether my time is valuable or not. However, sometimes when thinking about sacrifice, it may be easier to consider physical things, like Magic cards, so that it will be easier to understand what is going on.

For me, sacrifice is a fundamentally important skill. From my observations of the world, in order to gain things of significant value, one needs to sacrifice. Furthermore, giving up extremely valuable things does tend to get me things of even greater value. These sacrifices do tend to be quite risky, as there are times when the thing gained is not guaranteed (the sacrifice is for the possibly of gain, rather than the guarantee of gain). However, with the transitory nature of our world, most things we sacrifice are lost eventually anyway. At least through a sacrifice, we can hope to gain more than if we had tried to hold onto the things that cannot be held onto.