Love More, Laugh A Lot, Expect Less

People always want to get what they expect. When they don't, they become disappointed. And when they direct that disappointment toward someone else, they become resentful. Countless marriages have ended in divorce because partners carried expectations that went unfulfilled and they harbored resentment until the breaking point.

Expectation, resentment and blame are so powerful they are the basis of political movements.

Having expectations feels as natural to us as breathing. It almost feels like 'a right'. Our relationship to expectation is something we contend with throughout our lives: what we expect from ourselves, what we expect from others—especially those closest to us—and what we feel others should expect from us. 

When we're young, expectations seem to be at their peak. It's why Charles Dickens titled his coming-of-age novel Great Expectations, the story of the orphan Pip and his education in the realities of life. Like Pip, our lives are often shaped by learning to expect less, or at least differently. Adulthood is, in part, defined by discovering what we can and cannot reasonably expect from the rest of our lives, and by how we learn to reconcile with that emotionally.

I once came across a gravestone in a cemetery in Bennington, Vermont (incidentally where the novelist Saul Bellow is buried, I was on a sort of pilgrimage). It was a final message to the living: "Love More, Laugh A Lot, Don't Expect."

The problem of expectations, at least in the way we understand it today, is relatively modern. It emerged alongside the expanding opportunities of the nineteenth century, around the same time Dickens wrote Great Expectations. For most of human history, people certainly had hopes and fears, but expectations weren't much of a consideration.

Life was largely prescribed, preordained, and predetermined. I don't mean that in a spiritual sense, although many people believed that too. I mean it in a practical one. The circumstances of your birth determined almost everything that followed: your wealth, your education, your occupation, your marriage prospects, and your social status. Social mobility was limited, economic opportunity scarce, and political freedom restricted. If expectations existed, they were often focused on avoiding misfortune rather than achieving personal fulfillment.

We often hear it said that having children reflects optimism about the future. It's a measure of expectation. A completely contemporary concept. In the past, having many children more often reflected something closer to necessity. Infant mortality was high, and surviving children provided a measure of economic security in old age.

The rise of expectations—made possible by prosperity, freedom, and choice—has created an unexpected challenge in the pursuit of happiness.

In their book Engineering Happiness, Rakesh Sarin and Manel Baucells offer a simple formula: Reality minus Expectations equals Happiness.

Therefore, if you want to be happier, they argue, find ways to narrow the gap between expectations and reality. Since altering reality is a heavy lift, it is usually the more sensible approach to modify our expectations.

But that's the rub.

The moment we begin lowering or changing our expectations, we worry that we're settling. We tell ourselves we're not getting what we deserve. We fear we're rationalizing failure. We feel ashamed, incompetent, or insufficiently ambitious. Social media, with its endless parade of curated perfection,  amplifies those feelings exponentially.

It seems to me we should consider having expectations at all as a privilege.

I'm not saying you shouldn't aim high in life. By all means, pursue ambitious goals. Just don't expect the outcome. If reality happens to match your expectations, you might consider yourself 'successful'. The hard work paid off.

But if reality turns out to be something you never expected, consider yourself luckier still. Expectations confirm what you already know. The unexpected, for better or worse, teaches you something new.

Skeptical of Skepticism: By The Numbers

The Universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.

The Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago.

Doing the math (13.8 - 4.5 = 9.3), the universe existed for about 9.3 billion years before Earth arrived. 

That means roughly 67% of cosmic history had already passed by the time our planet was born. 

The earliest undisputed evidence of microbial life on Earth dates about 3.5-3.7 billion years ago.

The Milky Way is just one local drop in the ocean. There are an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.

When you multiply billions of habitable planets per galaxy by trillions of galaxies, the sheer probability of life existing elsewhere seems almost certain.

It took roughly 4 billion years for that primitive microbial life on Earth to evolve into intelligent, technologically advanced civilization. 

In the Milky Way alone, there are an estimated 100 billion to 400 billion stars. Roughly 10% to 20% of them are sun-like (G-type stars), meaning there are tens of billions of solar cousins out there.

Current estimates suggest that a significant fraction of those sun-like stars host planets in the "Goldilocks zone" where liquid water can exist. We are talking billions of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy alone.

Conclusion: The chances that intelligent life predating Earth by billions of years exists in the universe are extremely high.

A Poem like a UFO

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A poem like a UFO

vaguely seen           hovering  

above the treetops

at night

                              a craft 

   guided by super intelligence

                 flashing coloured lights

moving

                in ways

       that defy 

                              known physics:

most people don't know

what to make of it

imagine 

strange beings 

with enlarged heads

and dark eyes

visiting

from a distant 

                        galaxy

come

to convey

                        telepathically

a profound message 

that could save us

from ourselves

and leave

one

forever changed.

Skeptical of Skepticism

Can I trust my skepticism?

It's a question I've been asking myself lately because of UFOs.

They aren't called UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) these days. They're called UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). Perhaps the name was changed to distance the subject from the "flying saucer" imagery that dominated popular culture since the late 1940s.

One thing is certain: the phenomenon is being taken more seriously than it once was. There have been televised Congressional hearings in the United States, along with the ongoing release of government materials and testimony from military personnel.

For most of my life, I've regarded UFOs as a subcategory of Cold War kitsch. Even if the phenomenon is entirely fictional, it remains worthy of interest. Like any enduring cultural artifact, it tells us something about who we are and what preoccupies us. It is, in its own way, another form of storytelling.

That's why I'm a sucker for eyewitness accounts, which forms the vast majority of 'evidence'. I've tried to avoid the more sensational material, but I've read a number of books by reporters who strike me as credible. I've watched fighter pilots testify before Congress about encounters they cannot explain, and followed the release of government videos with genuine interest.

Even more tantalizing is the archival material, much of which is now easily accessible online. Yes, there is an enormous amount of garbage out there. But if you know where to look, some of what you find is remarkably compelling, particularly the older eyewitness reports, interview recordings and photographs, before the existence of iPhone filters.

What becomes difficult to dismiss is the sheer volume of accounts. Thousands upon thousands of documented reports spanning decades, continents, cultures, and social classes. The witnesses include fighter pilots and police officers, scientists and teachers, farmers and businesspeople, children and grandparents. They come from every conceivable background. 

Even if one were to presume that the vast majority of the reports are hoaxes, the remaining percentage would constitute a very large number of encounters. 

Some cases, in particular, resist easy explanation. The most persuasive to me involve multiple sources of corroboration, large groups of people observing the same phenomenon. And of those (there are many dozens) some are especially compelling because they involve children who report having the same experience. One such event happened at Westall School in Melbourne, Australia, in 1966 in which there were reportedly as many as 300 first-hand eye witnesses. Another more recent event took place at Ariel School near Harare, Zimbabwe in 1994, where 62 children aged 6-12 described a remarkably similar encounter with a craft and unusual beings.

At what point does the cumulative weight of evidence begin to outweigh lingering doubt? When the tables turn, and it's the skeptics who start looking like the ones pulling at loose threads to preserve a conclusion. That's when skepticism begins to resemble a belief system rather than a method of inquiry.

We live in a strangely incongruous time. We are surrounded by technologies that would have seemed like magic only a generation ago. Smartphones, artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles—each would once have belonged to the realm of science fiction. Reality seems to be melding with the imagination.

At the same time, this is an era of manipulation and deception, where images can be fabricated and videos altered convincingly with your personal device, making trust ever more difficult. Even believing your own eyes comes into question.

The obvious recent example is how the assault on the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021, became questioned, despite millions (perhaps billions) of witnesses on TV, countless hours of video footage, and extensive testimony and documentation.

It seems that today, more than at any other time, if an alien spacecraft landed in the middle of Central Park, was witnessed by thousands of people and filmed from every angle, most people would refuse to believe it. More likely they would find reason to call it a hoax and dismiss it as some kind of conspiracy. 

Check out the dark satire Don't Look Up. It's a film about a comet on a collision course with Earth and how easily we are manipulated and lulled into a state of collective denial.  

But human beings are fundamentally believing creatures. The battle is always over what we believe and, as Orwell documented, who controls that belief. 

Belief makes ordinary life livable. Every morning you head out to the driveway because you believe your car will start. Or you wait for the metro or the bus because you believe it will arrive. You believe you'll arrive at work safely. You make plans for next week, next month, and next year based on belief.

None of these things is certain, it's solely based on past experience. Plus, verifiable facts take us only so far. Beyond them lies a vast territory of assumptions, expectations, probabilities, and trust.

Even deeper, the aspects of life that give existence meaning—creativity, invention, ambition, hope—are all rooted, to some degree, in belief. We make decisions based on assumptions we believe to be true and commit ourselves to futures that do not yet exist.

Which is why I've started becoming skeptical of my skepticism. After all, skepticism relies on a set of beliefs too.

Not in UFOs, ghosts, or miracles, but belief in the reliability of certain methods for knowing anything at all. Belief that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Belief that human perception is flawed. Belief that simpler explanations are usually preferable to more complicated ones.

These are reasonable assumptions. They are probably indispensable assumptions. But they are assumptions nonetheless.

At some point, every worldview rests upon foundations that cannot themselves be proven, even skepticism.

I'm not ready to entirely abandon my skepticism. Just a little more prepared to be open to possibility.   

George

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George is the man who mops my floor,

He comes every day at half past four,

Greek with a thick mustache, speaks broken French,

Arrived here after serving as a driver in the war.

Every day I ask George if he’s doing well,

Most days he mutters "The world’s going to hell,"

Then adds, "What choice is there, we have to soldier on,

If you only knew half the stories I could tell."

George was part of this building’s construction crew,

Poured concrete and swept the floors in ‘62,

The owner liked him, said "Start a cleaning company, 

And I’ll give all of my business to you."

George’s company employed 300 at its peak,

Today he's rich as an Arabian sheik,

Turned eighty last Thursday, never said a word,

Came to mop my floor as he does every week.

"The Blacks have no respect, the Asians and Indians too,

I clean up after them like I’m paid to do."

George says he's not racist, just telling the truth,

Then smiles and says he owes everything he has to that one old Jew. 

Self-Worth

When I was growing up there was a lot of talk about self-worth, or self-esteem. It was the pop-psychological buzzword of the 1970s. Books were written on how to raise children with a healthy sense of self-worth because low self-worth was thought to be the root of almost every problem. Violent criminals had low self-worth. Moral degenerates had low self-worth. Losers had low self-worth. Self-worth seemed to explain everything.

It was defined as the feeling that you had value. Parents were told they had to make their children feel wanted and cherished so they would grow up believing they were valuable. Conversely, emotional neglect was said to lead inevitably to a lifetime of pain and unhappiness.

My parents were very preoccupied by this. At least my mother was. An avid reader of pop psychology, she seemed convinced that her own struggles stemmed from a lack of self-worth. Her parents had come of age during the Depression. Their priorities were making money and climbing the social ladder. They succeeded. My mother grew up with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, so material deprivation could hardly explain her unhappiness.

The discovery that her problems were rooted in low self-worth was a revelation. The emotional neglect, ignorance, and occasional cruelty of her parents suddenly became the obvious culprit.

I sometimes wonder if previous generations of the past blamed their parents for their personal shortcomings. I suspect that before the earned affluence of the postwar era, most families were too busy trying to put food on the table to spend much time analyzing their emotional wounds.

They didn't turn out so badly.

Which raises the question: is self-worth really a thing, or is it just another piece of pop-psychological mythology?

I think self-worth is largely a fiction. A convenient explanation that transformed unhappiness into grievance and gave people somewhere to hang the blame for lives that had not turned out as they hoped.

That is not to say that a structured and supportive family life is unimportant. Of course it matters. It is to a child what water, sunlight, and fertile soil are to a plant. But it is not destiny.

History is filled with people who emerged from deprivation, neglect, and dysfunction to accomplish remarkable things and live extremely fulfilling lives.

Worth works psychologically much as it does economically. You may believe something has value, but unless someone else is willing to pay for it, that value remains purely theoretical. There is no such thing as self-worth. Worth is actually determined by others.

And that's a good thing, because it means worth is not intrinsic—it is earned.

To have value, you must be useful. Productive. Capable of contributing something that others need, want or at least respect.

This is where family life matters. A supportive upbringing does not instill worth; it cultivates empowerment, independence, and resilience. A child who learns to navigate the world, solve problems, and recover from setbacks develops the capacity to become useful and productive. And from that, a sense of one's self-worth naturally follows.

One of the great lies modern parents have told their children is that they are perfect just as they are. And related to that is the idea that love means smothering their children with attention and affirmation.

The result is often not confidence but learned helplessness.

Children do not become strong because they are told they are valued. They become valued because they are taught how to become strong.

Beaufort

News today that Israeli forces have crossed the Litani River in southern Lebanon and recaptured the medieval Crusader castle called Beaufort. 

I say recaptured and not captured because it’s not the first time. The story of the last time Israel held Beaufort is fictionalized in the acclaimed 2005 novel of the same name (originally entitled in Hebrew ‘If There Is A Heaven') by Ron Leshem which later became a harrowing Academy Award nominated film.

I reviewed the novel for The Gazette, and also had the privilege of introducing Ron at a reading at the JPL.

If you haven’t read the novel, now may be a good time. Suffice to say, the story - which is essentially about the futility of war and the sacrifice of a generation - does not end well.