High Expections
As anyone who has been reading these reflections knows, this has been a difficult year. But I am glad to say I am finding my way back to myself and to my inner light. That has not happened through my own effort alone. It has happened because of the gift of community, of friendship, and of a shared belief that life still holds more for us than what we can see in the hardest moments.
I am learning to live with high expectations – not just of myself, but of the universe. Of whatever it is that holds us together and connects us in love.
Life has a way of beating us down and tempting us to believe that expecting anything is only setting ourselves up for disappointment. But life is playing the long game, and we truly do not know what is coming next. Hurt is inevitable, yes. It is something to be experienced fully. But it is not something we are meant to cling to. As Richard Rohr reminds us, passion and emotion are real and powerful – yet they are meant to move through us, not define us.
My life will not be an exercise in looking back as a precautionary tale of how not to screw it up next time. Instead, it will be a celebration of the remarkable experiences I have already known, with the expectation that even more meaningful experiences are still to come.
That is also the work we do together at the Momentum Center. We nurture high expectations for ourselves, for each other, and for our community. Low expectations can so easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But when we raise the bar for what is possible, we begin to see creativity, connection, and belonging come alive. And it is in that space – a space of friendship and mutual support – that we can imagine a different kind of future and take steps to create it.
Allison Ledgerwood’s TEDx Talk reminds us that it is far easier to get stuck in the negative than to stay focused on the positive. Our brains are wired to hold on to what goes wrong more tightly than what goes right. But, as she beautifully illustrates, with intention and practice we can retrain ourselves to live with higher expectations, to choose gratitude, and to lean toward hope.
And when things inevitably fall apart – as they sometimes do – that too can be a gift. Richard Rohr speaks to the value of breakdowns, reminding us that collapse often clears the way for us to return to a greater sense of ourselves and our place in the universe.
So let us live into high expectations – not as demands that life must meet on our terms, but as an act of trust in what is possible. Let’s believe that the universe is conspiring with us, that love is still the binding force, and that the best is yet to come.
At the Momentum Center, we see this come alive every day. Through programs, friendships, and shared experiences, we remind one another that hope is not naïve and that joy is not out of reach. Together, we practice living with high expectations – for ourselves and for others, for healing, for inclusion, for belonging. I invite you to join us in that work. Come participate, share your gifts, or simply show up and be present. However you engage, you are part of creating a community that expects – and experiences – the very best of what life has to offer.
Namaste,
Barbara Lee VanHorssen
Experi-Mentor
Barbara@MomentumCenterGH.org
