The Archive

The High School Sweethearts

Every school, ney, every grade has one of those.  The high school sweethearts that eventually end up getting hitch off the first day of graduation and moving to New York in the hopes that they’ll become rich in famous.  As if life were that easy.  The idealistic couple do not realize is that high school comes with a pair of goggles that blinds them, especially in the ways of love.  Relationships formed during the primary stage of education is often categorized as trivial, childish, and short-lived.  Most people chose to ignore these common elements in high school relationships, believing that they’ll “beat the odds”.  But, regrettably, they never do.

It’s not that I’m a pessimist.  In reality, I’m a realist.  It isn’t that I do not support relationships in high school.  Though it sickens me when I witness PDA in the hallways every time I pass my locker on the 3rd floor, I smile at the passionate signs of affection that are both sweet and PG.  However, what I don’t acknowledge is the fact that these relationships will withstand the test of time.  No matter what degree of “love” these couples feel, it is merely a naive sense of passion rather than a public display of true love.  Barely in one’s teens, how can one know what “love” is.  In fact, even a man in his late eighties can have trouble comprehending the concept of love.

Even if there are claims of “us meant to be together” or “we’re soulmates”, these claims are invalid when it comes to the truth: that high school relationships are not real.  Sure, I can believe that if you have dated for two years and you truly do love each other.  But I don’t believe is that you’ll spend the rest of your life together under a roof in some suburban house on the prairie singing lullabies to your twin baby girls.  Why?  Because those relationships are reserved for the real world.  In high school relationships, all there is to it is holding hands from class to class and figuring out who pays on your first date.  In real relationships, the problems are more complex, the fights are more intense, the relationship is more real and naturally, the passion is more real than any high school relationship felt merely on the surface.

Of course I support your claims that you do love your boyfriend/girlfriend.  They could very well be a lovely match for you.  But I doubt they’re a “match made in heaven” when they’re merely a match made for four-years time.  Love shouldn’t be something treaded in so trivially.  It requires a sense of maturity, sophistication, and mutual respect, most of which many have not yet discovered in high school.

Expectations

There are expectations everywhere in life.  Your future occupation.  The type of person you’ll become.  What car you’ll drive?  Where you’ll grow old and who with?  These expectations, no matter how trivial, are what dominate society and each individual thought.  Most people end up claiming they have no expectations in life, but naturally, they end up having the biggest expectations of all.

I realized this when I applied for a position that I knew I would never get in a million years.  There were much more capable people than me for this job with more experience and leadership in this field.  But still, I continued hoping that I would beat the odds and fulfill my unknown expectations.  When the day came where the results came back, I discovered how truly dependent I became on watching my expectations become reality.  I produced this fantasy where my expectations were more than my expectations.  They were my dreams.  They became my drug.  I didn’t realize until the moment I saw that I didn’t get the position.  Some part of me expected it.  I gave the world’s worst interview.  I didn’t have an airtight resume.  And honestly, I was not fit for the job.  But, some distant part of me wanted that job.  I built up my expectations only to have them torn down by my own blatant blindness to what was right in front of me.  That I wasn’t fit for the job.

Expectations can come from any direction in life, throwing you off course.  Building up high expectations can be a dangerous thing.  If fulfill, it can give you a sense of ecstasy, a feel of achievement in something your expectations already provided you.  However, in failure, your headstrong expectations can send you plummeting from the high skies your expectations sent you back down to the Earth where the mere mortals roam, with similar expectations unachieved and unobtained.  

My own brash expectations clouded my judgment in my love life, where a certain boy (let’s call him Logan) pushed me off balance and left me stranded in a sea of my own unfulfilled presumptions.  From the beginning of the year, I’ve enjoyed the last class of the day not only because of its easygoing atmosphere but also in hopes of making conversation with the cute boy that sits in the seat next to me.  The ongoing small talk extended for much longer that I had anticipated and soon enough, my expectations grew.  I began to expect the best outcomes: a fairytale ending, a romantic date, a heartbreaking conflict, a soap opera relationship.  But inherently, life does not work this way.  There’s a reason why they’re called ‘expectations’ not ‘reality’.  Eventually, reality had to set in.  I need not regale you with how my story ends because it obviously did not conclude with golden cursive words that read: “Happily Ever After”.  Not even close.

That’s the thing about expectations.  They can be great in seeking ambition and striving harder in life.  It can grant great results in occupations, in academics, in friendships, in jobs.  But sadly, it does not come without consequences.  Having high expectations often leads one down a path of misery, the unfulfilling graveyard of half-achieved hopes and dreams.  Expectations create an atmosphere not of accomplishment but of defeat.  A dangerous thing: expectations.  They emerge when least expected, subtly crawling across your mind.  It isn’t until the unfulfillment of said expectations that you realize how much you have truly fallen.