Tranquility = life - your expectations

It’s the 23rd of December 2023 and I’m sat by a fire on a beach.

I’m looking around at all of the sun kissed, happy people here, wondering why they’re all naked. Oh, I’m on a hippy beach. That’s why.

It’s night time and the moon is illuminating the beach as people dance to techno music and revel in the bliss of hippy freedom.

The Tenerife nights aren’t freezing cold, but cold enough for me to need to huddle by the fire to keep warm.

I came to this beach with my best friend Joe who’s close by talking to one of the hippies.

I’m sat by the fire, around 50 metres from the sea, with 3 Polish guys who are stirring their bean soup and joking and laughing with each other. They’re all around 40 years old with golden skin and muscular bodies. I then realise I’m sat with the shamans of this hippy community.

Whilst sitting here I begin to think about who is the leader. Surely it would be a strong man who’s in shape, able to build things and is direct and assertive, I think as I start scanning the hippies to look for their leader.

But my thoughts are interrupted as I hear what sounds like two people arguing.

So I turn to my left and see my friend Joe talking with one of the Polish guys. I take one look at him and realise, he’s the leader.

He’s muscular, fully naked, tanned and covered in tattoos with long slick back hair. The kind of man you could rely on in a crisis.

So I stand up to see what’s happening but I only catch the last part of their conversation as the Polish guy walks away from Joe, still talking.

“What is your contribution to this society? What have you brought for us? Wood. Food. What?”

I take one look at Joe to measure his response, wondering if he’d take it as an insult.

“Hey.” Joe replies. “I appreciate that more than you know.”

So I take a sigh of relief at the realisation they weren’t arguing. The polish guy was merely testing Joe’s masculinity. Our masculinity as me and Joe are a party of two. So I discussed the conversation with Joe, and we intuitively knew what had to come next.

Three days later, on the 26th of December, we decided it was time to return to the hippy beach, but this time with an offering.

So as evening comes around, we gather the supplies in the hostel we were staying at and make the hour long pilgrimage to the hippy beach.

But our options for an offering are limited. Because to get to the hippy beach you have to take a 15 minute bus then hike for 45minutes across rocky Spanish cliffs whilst the scorching sun glares down on you. But we couldn’t arrive empty handed. Not this time.

So as we get off the bus and begin the hike, we begin questioning where the hippies even get their wood for their fires in the first place. But then we stumble across the perfect gift. A 6ft long dead palm tree.

Joe instantly pitches the idea to me that we could carry this dead tree and appear as heroes in the eyes of the muscular men and beautiful women of this hippy community. They’d be in awe of our manliness as they’d instantly revel in the hardship it took to carry this tree all the way across the cliffs, and they’d greet us with cheers and applause as they stand there in their nudity.

So we discuss it for 5 minutes until, debating whether it’ll be worth the effort, until we settled on taking it.

One at the front, one at the back, we carry the tree, which we think will be perfect for a fire, through the streets of people eating their evening meals and children playing football, all looking at us in laughter, until we reach the cliffs. Then the real challenge begins.

Locked into the challenge, me and Joe aren’t backing out. We invite the struggle as this tree, which weighs around 50kg, tears our forearms and strains our necks. But the bigger the struggle, the bigger the reward we think.

So 15 minutes go by and we take a break. We’re not even halfway and we’ve still got to make an ascent.

Me and Joe aren’t talking at this point. Talking would be a waste of energy. So we nod at each other and set our minds on the task and the scene of the hippies cheering and clapping our blessing and masculine offering we’ve brought.

At this point we’re sweating, panting, exhausted in the heat, wondering if we’d lost our way, but we turn a corner and start to hear the music. The lovely hippy music.

So we make our last descent and make our way down to the beach slowly, as we see all the hippies from 3 days ago sat there, fully naked, all looking at us, all 40 of them as the sun sets behind them.

I would shout out, look at us! We’re here. But I’m too tired. Save the celebrations for later, I think.

So we make the last jump as we carefully carry the tree down to the sandy beach.

“Ahhh.” We both sigh. Accomplished with our mission. Stood around 20 metres away from the hippies.

I wait with the tree as Joe transcends the waves of hippy hair to find our Polish leader. And I can see the excitement in his walk.

But as I’m looking from afar. Waiting for the clapping and cheering. There seems to be an awkwardness in the air.

The body language from Joe and the Polish guy seems to be standoffish. Now I can see the Polish guy making a dismissive gesture whilst shaking his head.

So Joe comes back to me with the news and I realise what he says next, is the real challenge.

“They don’t want it.” Joe says.

“Wait. What? Why? What about the fire?” I ask.

“Apparently you can’t use this for fire. It won’t burn. Plus you can get fined by the Spanish coastal guards for burning it.”

“Ahhh.” My sigh takes on a different tone this time as I lean back against a rock and try not to notice all the beautiful sun kissed naked women talking amongst themselves whilst looking at us, centre stage.

Me and Joe reconvene. “Ok.” We both say as we accept our fate.

So we take the tree to the side of the cliff, tear it up and debrief our experience, away from the sight of the hippies.

“You know what, if they don’t want it, that’s fine. I enjoyed the journey.” Joe says.

“Exactly, they can use it if they want to, if not, no hassle.” I respond.

So we shake hands, proud of our mission, drop our expectations and go and dance around the fire with all the naked hippies.

Distillation:

There’s a brilliant quote from the book the Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo which reads: “you can’t promise what you don’t yet have.” And this is a brilliant description of the nature of expectations.

When we set an expectation for how something should go in our minds, we’re setting ourselves up for failure regardless of whether our expectation is met or not.

Because if the expectation isn’t met, we’ll be disgruntled. But if it is met, it will reinforce the behaviour of imprinting an idea of how life should be externally rather than enforcing the behaviour of focusing on our inputs (realistically, the only things we can control).

Expectations of how life should be creates tension as you try to squeeze between an image of what should be and what actually is.

Focusing on the effort you put in with no thought of reward creates solace as your expectations dissolve in the flow of your activity.

Me and Joe had the expectation that the hippies would accept our gift with open arms. But it wasn’t until they rejected our offering that we were forced to dispel with our expectation and instead express gratitude for the effort we put in regardless.

How often have you fallen prey to being caught off guard as a situation turns out differently than expected? How often have you fallen into ruts because you’ve been so rooted in your expectation and the fantasy it provides for you that when it’s shattered before your very eyes, you’re unable to pivot and let go of it?

At the root of expectations is desire. And as Buddha said all those years ago, “the end of desire is the end of sorrow.”

In Buddhism, desire is referred to as Taṇhā which also means “thirst, longing, greed.”

A set expectation is dead, as it exists in the past. Living your life in pursuit of it is like driving a car whilst looking in the rear view mirror; your gaze isn’t sharp, open and attentive to the ever winding and changing road ahead.

You’re unlikely to be able to get rid of your expectations completely, because the desire creating system within our brains is always running rampant. But what you can do is shift your expectations from external to internal.

When you’re focused on what you put in, rather than what you want to get out, your focus shifts from futile fascination over how things should be and tunes into meaningful occupation over your trajectory.

You want to give someone a gift? Focus on your gratitude for your act of charity. Don’t set your sights on whether this person will receive your gift with grace or not. Because other people have no obligation to live up to your expectations and vice versa.

As Naval Ravikant says, if you upset someone because they have an expectation of you, that’s their problem, not yours.

You want to become successful in your endeavours? Forget the idea of monetary reward or status and instead pour all your energy into the positive contributions you can make each day to your purpose. The thing which intrinsically drives you.

I’ve mentioned another equation before which has changed my life, but in the video in which I mentioned it I feel I didn’t explain it well, so allow me to try and summarise it within 30 seconds.

Want nothing + do anything = have everything.

Wanting nothing means we do away with our external expectations and desire. Do anything means, despite our desire less state, we don’t lounge around like a hippy smoking his life away, instead we still act in whatever way our soul guides us but without expectation of outcomes. Have everything means if we combine both of these things, we will live from a place where nothing is lacking and in fact, we live from a place of abundance in which we already have everything. In the words of Epictetus, we don’t wish that events will turn out the way we want, but we welcome them in whichever way they happen.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu Gid Khrisna tells the warrior Arjuna we have no right to the rewards of our work.

So it is with action. The reward is the action. The action is the ends, not the means.

Live this way, desiring nothing but what you have and expecting no outcome for your efforts, but still engaging in the effort anyway, and you’ll experience all the tranquility in the world.