By Dan Hazen / Herald Forum
I last wrote in this space about humility resulting from unmet expectations. But since then, the other side of the Expectations Coin has turned face up. Thinking about the new school year caused it to flip; to Hope.
This makes me a first-order nerd, but I always loved the start of school. I mean, every year from Kindergarten through 12th grade I was excited for the first day. I imagined all the great things to come: fun with friends, doing the cool stuff I saw older kids do the year before, winning some kind of award for being smart, athletic or wise, and I loved the new gear! Every night during the last week of August, I would enthusiastically inventory my Pee-Chees, pencils, erasers, binder tabs and other scholastic appurtenances. I’d lay out my new, crisply creased pants, my new shirts and shoes, vainly anticipating that my wardrobe would somehow stand out from the other kids’ whose parents shopped at the same, solitary, town clothing store (Gordy’s in Stanwood).
Of course, things never turned out the way I imagined. Classes were harder or more boring. Friends were aloof, girls uninterested; or openly disgusted. The athletic heights I longed to reach were unreachable, the pencils broke, the Pee-Chees tore, and my knock-off Adidas got scuffed up on day two. Yet, come next August, hope bloomed again. Did that make me crazy? Stupid? Naive?
Maybe.
But I’d like to think it was more about the nature of hope itself and less about expectations. I think the difference is that expectations carry a sense of entitlement: We have earned or been promised something, and so we “expect” it. But we “hope” for things which are not tethered to effort, obligation or even justice. I didn’t expect each new school year to be great because I earned it, or I was owed it. I hoped it would be better because, looking back on it now, I chose to.
I chose hope because even as a kid (perhaps because of the adult examples around me) I sensed that if I slumped from hope down into mere expectations, they would somehow always go unmet. Therefore, a kind of spiritual gravity would pull me inward and harden me. I watched it happen to a few of my peers. As they got older and failed expectations accumulated like ashes in a fire pit, hope diminished proportionally. Sure, they looked more mature and sophisticated, fashionable and cosmopolitan, but they also became selfish, hard-hearted and unhappy. Unmet expectations make you mad. Unmet hope isn’t even a thing because hope is chosen.
I’m worried for the kids starting school this year as hope seems to be chosen less often (the reasons for which, too numerous and complex to cover here) and it’s no longer just a few kids being affected. Expectation has for decades been outpacing hope, meaning many (most?) grade school kids display hard edges and remarkably closed-off hearts.
So, to my fellow grandparents: Let’s be explicit about teaching our grandkids how to choose hope. Yes, it will make us look sappy and less sophisticated than the average eighth-grader, but trust me, I’ve lived with it and it’s not that bad. Yet, it might make all the difference over time, as expectations continue to go up in flames and hope becomes even harder to choose.
Dan Hazen lives in Marysville and works in Everett.
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