{"id":2215,"date":"2015-01-18T19:28:54","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T00:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/?p=2215"},"modified":"2015-01-19T08:58:57","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T13:58:57","slug":"2215","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2015\/01\/18\/2215\/","title":{"rendered":"Expectation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Do unto others as you would have them do unto you\u2026or NOT<\/strong>.\u00a0 Leave it to me to second guess the golden rule, sorry Luke.\u00a0 But what if what you would want doesn\u2019t even come close to what another would want?\u00a0 How golden is a rule that puts everyone in that awkward position? \u00a0How can a person really \u201cbe that person\u201d (legacy lesson number one) without going down the road to hell, you know the one paved with good intentions.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare wrote that expectations are the root of all heartache,\u00a0if that\u2019s so why not live outside of expectations?\u00a0 I ran up against a few situations this week and last that expectations seemed to get the better of me and it gave me pause.<\/p>\n

I linked a blog post of mine on Anne Lamott\u2019s Facebook page in genuine camaraderie with a phrase she turned in one of her posts.\u00a0 She mentioned she was \u201ctaking the sacrament of putter\u201d.\u00a0 Brilliant!\u00a0 My \u201cArt of Puttering\u201d was in keeping with her sentiment.\u00a0 My post received over a thousand hits to my blog\u2026let me say that again, my post received over a thousand hits.\u00a0 It was a holy shit moment bigger than anything I had yet to see.\u00a0 I was grateful, I was elated, and I was happy, beyond joyful.\u00a0 You can imagine.<\/p>\n

So what did I do? \u00a0I considered, no I actually tried the same thing on other blogs expecting to see another fabulous boost to my blog stats.\u00a0 See how that word snuck in there?\u00a0 I didn\u2019t post with a good intention, I didn\u2019t for one minute check my motivation.\u00a0 Payoff, zero.\u00a0 Ok maybe not zero but it was kinda that road to hell thing.<\/p>\n

Last week when I was researching my meditation piece I ran up against this:<\/p>\n

May all this remain undefiled<\/em><\/p>\n

By the stains of the eight mundane concerns; <\/em><\/p>\n

And may I, recognizing all things as illusion, <\/em><\/p>\n

Devoid of clinging, be released from bondage.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the teaching of the Dalai Lama.\u00a0 The eight mundane concerns are attitudes that tend to dominate our lives generally. They are: becoming elated when someone praises you, becoming depressed when someone insults or belittles you, feeling happy when you experience success, being depressed when you experience failure, being joyful when you acquire wealth, feeling dispirited when you become poor, being pleased when you have fame, and feeling depressed when you lack recognition.<\/p>\n

In no way am I \u201cthat person\u201d that can remain undefiled by the stains of the eight mundane concerns. I could meditate until the cows come home and never begin to get close to releasing at least three of those mundane concerns\u00a0from my grasp. \u00a0However, it seems it all comes down to checking your motivation.\u00a0\u00a0\"227\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My Lina lost her fight with cancer this week, or I should say I helped her end her fight with cancer this week.\u00a0 This was a case of do unto others as you would have them do unto you, kinda.\u00a0 The decision to have the emergency surgery was mine back in December, the decision to begin chemo was mine.\u00a0 My motivation was to give her as much time with us as we could without any sacrifice of quality of life.\u00a0 The expectation was that she could beat the average life expectancy of this very invasive cancer.\u00a0 My expectation, not hers, which would give us all time to learn to live in the moment and prepare Toto (and me) for life without her. \u00a0It\u2019s what I would want for myself but I went right down that damn road\u2026again.\u00a0 We had a month and a week of quality, joyous live in the tail wagging happy dance moments until she decided her work was done.\u00a0 I let go the expectations and let her go with no regrets.\u00a0 I learned that to do unto others as you would have them do unto you means actually listening to them and acting on what it is they want.\u00a0 That the harder thing to do is sometimes the right thing to do. To try and stay off that damn road lined with good intention by adapting the golden rule without expectation and living the lessons Lina taught.<\/p>\n

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And so I\u2019ve also decided that people will find my little blog if I genuinely do my work, believe in my message and live my life the way I want my story told.\u00a0 When I honestly believe that sharing what I have to say on someone else\u2019s like-minded post is appropriate and purely motivated I will do so.\u00a0 When I\u2019m tempted to work the social media game I won\u2019t. \u00a0\u00a0I believe that what I have to say is important and I will find a proper way to say it without expectation of increased site stats and Facebook likes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If nothing else I will learn to check my motivation.<\/p>\n

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Do unto others as you would have them do unto you\u2026or NOT.\u00a0 Leave it to me to second guess the golden rule, sorry Luke.\u00a0 But what if what you would want doesn\u2019t even come close to what another would want?\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[193,6],"tags":[562,542,561,560],"class_list":["post-2215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ordinary-pet-legacies","category-pause-points","tag-act-without-expectation","tag-all-dogs-go-to-heaven","tag-check-your-motivation","tag-golden-rule"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s27hQ5-2215","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2215"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2226,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions\/2226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}