High Hopes, Lower Expectations.....

  I imagine most of us have had high hopes for the endeavors we’ve undertaken in our lives. We probably wouldn’t have undertaken some of those endeavors if it hadn’t been for those hopes. I also imagine that for most of us, our expectations weren’t usually as high as our hopes. Back at Millville Grade School, my old buddy Stinky Wilmont and I always hoped for straight A’s on our report cards. In actuality, we expected a little less. I’m pretty sure Stinky expected quite a bit less. Our expectations were usually more on target than our hopes.

  A while back, when the top prize in the Powerball lottery reached more than $500 million, I bought a couple of tickets. Of course I was hoping I would win, but in reality I wasn’t expecting it. Once again, my expectations turned out closer than my hopes.

  I think our expectations tend to temper our hopes a lot of the time. The nice day I hope for in June is considerably different than the nice day I hope for in January. I guess I just don’t expect quite as much in January.

  I’ve ran for office a few times on the Libertarian ticket, always hoping to win the election, but in lieu of winning, hoping to present an alternative to the current status quo, one that involves more personal responsibility and less government. After most elections, I can usually say that I did worse than I had hoped, but better than I expected. Occasionally, things turn out both worse than I had hoped and worse than I expected. I suppose that will happen once in a while if you are any kind of optimist at all. If it never happens, you may a little bit too much of a pessimist.

  The beginning of the New Year has traditionally been the time for new hopes. I’m sure a lot of people are hoping they can pay off their Christmas purchases before Christmas rolls around again. Most of us are hoping for better times for our families, for the economy, for our country, and for the world.

  It’s obvious that we don’t all agree on what would constitute better times. We don’t all hope for the same things, and we certainly don’t all expect the same things. That fact never becomes more obvious than it does during those elections that I mentioned. Everybody hopes their candidate wins, so their party can fulfill their expectations of government, but I don’t believe things normally work out as well as people hope even if their candidate wins, and I don’t believe things normally work out as bad as people expect when their candidate loses.

  However this New Year turns out, I hope you all have a better year than you had last year. And I hope you get what you were hoping for, unless you were one of those that were hoping for more government. In that case, I hope you don’t get what you want, although I expect that you will. That’s normally how it works when the government is involved. What I hope for is usually on the other end of the spectrum from what I actually expect.

  I guess what I would really like to see happen would be for the government to stop using so much force all the time, and allow people that are hoping for more government to participate in its many and varied programs, while allowing those people who are hoping for less government to go their own way in personal matters that really shouldn’t involve the government.

 I know that’s an awful lot to hope for, and probably way too much to expect, but hey, it is a New Year.