About E-X-P-E-C-T-A-T-I-O-N-S

People who know me personally, may not know this. Not even my closest friend in Church/cg or wherever. And it may seem to be a possibility, people who i worked with either on a cg/church/work level knows it.

I think my boss senses it, and has confronted me with it, a week before i started Bible School.

Look here, i'm having a reflection right now. And being my blog, and a very public one at that, i think there are times where i feel that i wanna be a bit.... urm, emotionish about certain things. And it's great if u know me personally, since u might have a new perspective about me, for good or for bad, that's up to you. If u don't know me personally, maybe it's time u take time to reflect your life.

Anyway, what my boss did: We had a performance review done (even though i know that i've officially resigned and serving out my 'notice', and feel that there's no point), one week before i started SOT. And with the many questions that i've answered, it started me reflecting on myself a bit more, professionally and emotionally.

My boss, even though he knew that i'm enrolling into SOT, he asked me during the review, why do i wanna go to SOT? Is it for the theological knowledge?? Is it for personal? And even before i could give a satisfactory answer (read: politically correct answer that a non-christian can accept), he said this sentence which astounded me: It's to find out who i really am.

Though i thought that might not come from him, and i've never really thought much, because going to SOT has been a dream to be fulfilled, to give 5 months of my life to study God's word, and to consecrate my life to the Lord.

I've started SOT for 2 weeks already. The experience is really great, being in the presence of God, and serving God daily in the ministry, and chionging to work on Mondays and Wednesdays after school. I remembered what Pst Phil said on the SOT opening message: If there's nothing that you get out of SOT, you must at least accept WHO you are. (sic)

And, i'm glad to say that, barely 2 weeks after hearing Pst Phil preach that, i've got some revelation about myself. And i know that in the next 4 months, i'm getting to know God, and even more about myself.

Gong Simi??

I wasn't a very happy person. I always feel very very short-changed in many areas, and often attributed it to something/ some event or some people (or so i thought). Which is very wrong la.

Like when i tell my sch mates how much i'm earning, I sometimes get 'encouragements' to stop cleaving to my job and start searching for a greenier pasture that's waiting for me to graze.

In as much as i wanna be well-paid, but i guess at times it's a choice that i've made earlier in life. Sometimes, i'm too emotionally, and that may be what caused me to be paid wayyyyyy below the market rate. But as i've said, it's a choice that i've made. I'm not regretting it as yet, because i know that i'm living my choice. And being in SOT, i believe that God will provide me a better career thereafter.

With the people that shaped me, that's where i've got this revelation.

There are always people out there, whom i know and whom they know me, which i think they may have a rather negative perspective about me. And u know la, this kind of things, u don't need to have it said it out loud in your face, you can sense it somehow. And during instances where i felt this, i felt inferior, literally like a piece of crap.

And until this revelation came, i started to feel much better about myself.

I know that there may be people out there who may think of me as inferior, and not as good as them. And this sets some sort of 'expectation' that they may accidentally/intentionally/deliberately imprinted on me. And i, without realizing, imprinted these expectations on myself. And i felt very very unhappy for a looong while.

But when i came to SOT, even though Pst B and Pst D never covered these (we are still at the Bible Study courses), i started to have a new perspective. I didnt' even pray about these feelings, since i didn't really know about all these that i'm feeling.

It was just this week, that this word, E-X-P-E-C-T-A-T-I-O-N, that really blasted its way into my puny little brain.

E-X-P-E-C-T-A-T-I-O-N: the act or state of looking forward or anticipating.

I realized that i've been really unhappy on the inside, because i'm living in other people's expectations! Because if there are people out there who really expects me to behave in an inferior matter, and i did, it may make their day to know that there's another reason to laugh at/humiliate (in secret), and i end up feeling like crap on the inside.

Or rather, there may be people who tasks me with stuff and i really cannot meet the unseen expectations that they have of me, i feel like crap.

And it was until today, while lying in bed, and not feeling well from chasing my nose from Boon Lay to my bed, that i finally realized why!

When people lays expectations unknowingly to me, I've also at the same time, laid an expectation on myself! Meaning to say that i've actually set a much higher expectation for myself as compared to the base expectation set for me by others!

I will not be able to meet the expectations of other people, Until i can meet my own expectations!

I realized that i've been unhappy not because of other people. It's because of myself! Sigh! And this is not just my problem. I believe there are many people out there who are setting exceptionally high self-expectations. And it will prob be the same issue that causes urm, mentally unstability in some people. Because they are so pressurized by their own expectations that they can NEVER meet, that they went cranky....

Right now, i feel very much happier now, knowing that i need to learn to meet my own expectations, before i can meet other people's expectations. Learning to be not-so-hard on yourself is not easy, but it's a life-long process of learning to be that. And i'm learning it daily. So i know that i will come to a place where i know that i can meet other people's expectation.