Expectation vs reality

Many a young single person is often asked what kind of person they would like to spend their life with. It’s also a fact that adolescence onwards, young people begin to form pictures of some sort of romantic ideal they spin their dreams around. Good looks seem to top the list! A sense of humour, kindness, ability to make friends are other desirables! Sometimes even a blatant Wish for a “Mr. Money-bags” or a sexy beautiful “Miss World” candidate! But sometimes a rigid format built in your mind becomes the reason why life presents you with something diametrically different.

I feel that too many expectations from life rob life of its sense of adventure and prevent you from looking around you. You are blinkered with your own defined biases that limit your vision. It makes for an unnecessarily judgemental and critical approach in turn making the person himself or herself a less attractive being.

Don't write-off someone because of your prejudicial and stereotyped attitudes and limited world view of what you desire in a partner-it could be someone totally different, better than your imagination and world view had conjured. Love can come in many guises! Are you turning it away?

An open-minded, tolerant, friendly person who takes life as it comes and people for what they are, is the one most likely to chance upon the elusive happiness that most seek but not all find. This kind of attitude also makes for a more attractive person to be around.

I’d say abandon boxed-in views of the type of person you want. You then end up blocking out and closing doors. You never know who you might love or have chemistry and laughter with and it is smarter to keep an open mind and understand that life may have a better plan for you?

It might be someone totally different to your ‘dream man’ but then maybe your dream was self-limiting and what is meant for you is much better and with an improved perspective toward your world view and ambitions. Often a girl is even unwilling to meet a man who is somewhat different from what her romantic notions conjured up in her growing years. Or a man refused to meet a girl because his mother said he is meant for a ‘fair girl’. Don’t balk, this is true even of our modern times.

I nearly chocked on my soup at dinner, when a well-educated friend whom I had always assumed was a woman of substance, declared that she is only keen on a ‘fair’ girl for her son. And she wasn’t referring to a girl who is reasonable or rational fair, but to a woman of a fair color.

Often life shows that reality can knock out all the epithets you had written in your diary, when love takes over the field!  Someone so different to your imagined fantasy! And all's well that ends well. Love and attraction have their own chemistry and all your preconceived notions are thrown out of the window. Sometimes it’s an immediate “this-is-it” moment, sometimes it's a discovery that takes its own time to unravel to a sense of wonder at the realisation, which is a wonderful moment.

Vehement hate is also too strong minded an emotion that you find youngsters fence themselves in. “I hate men too muscular”, “I hate men who are too formal…” etc.

There are so many hate criteria that you fence yourself in with these vehement walls that prevent you from exploring options.

And the humour of life is she’ll fall in love with a man who digs his nose and wears scruffy jeans and even lives happily ever after. I’ve seen the irony of life time and again. As they say in life, ‘never say never’!

The writer is a columnist, designer and brand consultant. Mail her at nishajamvwal@gmail.com