You Teck's Blog

Do you live by “Social Expectations”?

Posted by You Teck - 20/06/08 at 02:06:16 pm

I’ve always believed that our childhood period is the time where we are most innocent and free. It’s the period where we have great dreams and goals we want to fulfill. It’s the time where we don’t give a hoot to what other people think.

Isn’t funny that all this “freedom of thoughts” and dreams come to pass as we grow older? From the time where you’ll say I can be a “bla bla bla” to “it’s never going to happen”. Suddenly, it doesn’t really matter what you really want because you realize that it’s perfectly comfortable to agree with social expectations.

So, when did all this social expectation ideology come creeping into our lives? For me, I believed it all started when we began our primary education. It’s the time where adults will start comparing us with the other kids in the class. Comparison will range from behavior, results and even ambitions. Suddenly it’s not ok to be yourself anymore because you have to start pleasing the people who matters to you.

It’s really sad when this shift of mindset occurs because of the lost of real talent. Imagine a kid’s dream is to become the bravest fireman within his city but because of social expectation that he should follow his dad footstep on becoming the next CEO of their company, he has to forsake his true intentions.

Once the coating of social expectation becomes very thick a false sense of identity will devour us and a lot of actions or conversations created by us will have a fake aura around it. The most condemning thing about social expectations is that it makes us response to other people’s reaction rather than portray our own views at all times.

Take the simple example of a group discussion, have you ever encountered a situation where you had a different opinion from the rest of your group members but for some reason you decided it was better to follow the crowd instead? Well, that’s social expectation working at its best.

Another solid example of social expectation can be displayed through our career or education choices. Most of the time our heart will tell us to go for the choice we really want but because of comments such as “Oh come on, are you sure?” or “Haha, I can’t imagine seeing you do that”, we tend to back out on our earlier decision.

Other factor where social conditioning comes into action is in our romance life. One clear example of it is the real decision on when we should settle down and start a family. There seems to be this invisible rule where you got to somehow settle down by the age of 28-30 or people around you will start ringing the alarm bells. Thus, it doesn’t become your decision of wanting to get married at that age but it’s the social expectation decision.

For me, I don’t care about the expectation of others and whatever decision I choose to make, I make it because I want it to be that way. What I want to conclude here is that if you’ve always be living your life according to other people’s expectation, maybe it’s about time to ask yourself what you really want because I firmly believe that’s where your real freedom lies.

3 Comments »

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1. Thanks for sharing this – definitely agreed! I’m actually struggling with this ‘social expectation’, so I guess this kind of helps me believe in my decision and not get caught in the idea of living up to meet others’ needs.

   Comment by Nan — March 5, 2009 #

2. Hey Nan,

   Thanks for the comment. Great to know that you agree to this entry. Keep your spirits up and you’ll definitely break through this circle.

   Comment by You Teck — March 5, 2009 #

3. [...] intersecting related article: You Teck’s Blog [...]

   Pingback by The Life of Decci — December 27, 2010 #

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