Walking4Air

Chris Guillebeau travels the globe and in so doing, shares his life with the world. I have been following his blog for close on three years now and last year he wrote this great post, which at the time I could understand, however, I had never really experienced myself what he spoke of. That was until this year.  I happened to come across that very post by pure chance this morning again and wanted to share it with you. Chris wrote a post called “Legacy Projects and the Love of True Friends” and this is what he wrote:

“When you begin to share your important work with the world, a funny thing happens: some of the people closest to you don’t understand it.

They damn you with faint praise, or they point out something trivial that could be improved. Sometimes they never say anything at all, which of course is the worst thing.

When the time comes to show off your great project, you’re all, “Hey! Check out this thing that I did!”

And they’re all, “Oh. That’s nice.”

Nice?

You feel crushed because you desperately wanted their approval, even though you knew this was probably an unhealthy desire. (Just because you know something to be true doesn’t mean you always abide by it.)

You wanted—and expected—them to say, “This is great! I always knew you could do this. How can I help make it better? How can we tell the world about it?”

But no, you don’t get that at all. You just get the the faint praise, the brush-off, the indifference.

Then you realize… maybe this thing just wasn’t that important to them. Or maybe you didn’t know them as well as you thought you did. How sad.

But then! Another interesting thing happens.

All kinds of other people suddenly appear. Your fan club. Your support crew. A small army of remarkable people.

These people are all, “WOW. THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS. Here’s how my life is different because of the risk you took and the courage you displayed.”

You feel surprised. Refreshed. Energized. And most of all, you feel responsible to keep going, because you see it was good that you went ahead with your project even if you weren’t universally loved.

Some of the people you expect to be your biggest supporters will disappoint you—and some of the people you rarely thought about, or didn’t even know existed, will turn out to be your true friends.

This is how it works when you begin to share yourself with the world.

It’s a funny thing.”

The original post can be found on Chris Guillebeau website by clicking HERE – I really couldn’t have written it better myself ~ It hit me hard the first time I read it and it hits me even harder now that I can fully understand and experience for myself. It sad in a way, but I guess that’s just life.

Expectations are a funny thing. We hope for one thing but life gives us something completely different.  Expectations are often impossible to fulfill and almost always just results in complications.  We all have expectations about one thing or another but I think the only guarantees of expectations are disappointment. But, ever hopeful as I am, even though I may have fallen short of some of my expectations… I will continue to rise up to meet them for I really believe nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectation unless he or she begins with some wild expectations and actually believes in them.

Celebrating the journey.

For in the end it is true that whoever shows up are exactly the right people.

Expectations are a funny thing. I expect that you will agree!

In other news, we have been experiencing a stormy Cape Town the past few days.  It’s been raining, really raining ~ heavy rain and it is cold. Donna and I have been trying to make it out to the mountain for the past two days, with no success. We are hoping it clears by later this afternoon long enough for us to head out to the mountain for a hike. It will be icy cold, but I guess that’s just all part of our training for the big mountain.  Currently, between rain showers, there is intermittent blue sky ~ We may just make it to the mountain today. Keep your fingers crossed!