Borrowed one part of the title of the book that sparked this thought – ‘Surely you’re joking, Mr.Feynman!’ Towards the middle of the book, Feynman talks about the time he got incredulous job offers and wondered how he could ever meet the expectations. A colleague explained to him how he (Feynman) was doing a good job of teaching, and any other expectation that the university would have of him was subject to luck. They might get it out of him or not, and they were ok with the risk. Freed Feynman from guilt, and gave me a thought on expectations.
If I plot a me/others and meet/don’t meet 2×2 matrix, I get 4 boxes. Let’s take the easy ones first. I meet expectations, and so do others, life is awesome. I don’t meet expectations, others don’t, I think that would follow a natural progression of drifting apart. More on that in a bit. (more…)