Concerning Expectation and Happiness

Happiness is the goal for every action consciously taken by any human being. Happiness is the one thing we want merely for itself. Since life is to be experienced expectation based on our experiences plays a gigantic role in each person's actualization of happiness. Happiness is something like the satisfaction or contentment derived from the realization of certain expectations.

Our expectations can be charted in a hierarchical manner, that is, we have higher or greater expectations for some things so the value we place on them comes with a certain priority we ascribe to them. Though each person is composed differently and maintains a specialized sense of value priority human beings are genetically similar enough that reasonable conclusions can be deduced. A good model I have found is the "Hierarchy of Needs" presented by Maslow. If you are unfamiliar with it it can easily be researched via the sea of information you currently have at your fingertips, a.k.a. the internet. However, my focus isn't on the Heirarchy in general rather the personal conception of expectations as they are related to each person's happiness.

The proverbial saying "ignorance is bliss" maintains a certain element of truth. Though I think that bliss is the idea of a state of complete, constant, and unimpeded happiness; the idea of complete ignorance is something hard to observe and therefore hard to draw conclusions upon concerning the correlation between ignorance and bliss (total happiness in every respect). In any case the point is that ignorance does allow for a certain amount of contentment. If you don't know that there is something better out there you are not as stressed by the expectation that you may not come to realize it. From realization comes higher expectation.

Choice (as discussed by some academic I don't recall) becomes a problem for an individual who realizes opportunity or potential yet carries a personal expectation that is not conducive to a massive variety of choice. If expectations are too high then choice becomes stressful. Choice and expectation are intertwined because expectation is the model each person conceptualizes and choice remains the action or decision process we use for realizing our expectations. The reason stress is associated with choice in this way is because human beings make mistakes in their reasoning all the time and we often realize that the choices we made were not conducive to the expectations we held before the action was realized or before the decision was made.

Expectation is a personalized conception each person develops about what they think is conducive to their happiness. The process isn't flawless, as it is easy for every person to recall a moment where they thought they wanted something only to find out later they were wrong. All each person can do is make the best choices according to the available evidence they have in support of a particular choice.

Life is the pursuit of happiness and expectation is vital to realizing happiness. A particularly frustrating problem is the expectations we have for each other. Personal expectations NEVER match up completely so the mission is to always work to maintain a sufficient level of contentment between yourself and those whom you develop relationships with.

On a side note: You may be content in your ignorance of certain things, but that is only because you don't know what you are missing! In a constantly changing world expectations can expect to change and one should always be able to adjust their expectations to the discovery of new things.