Questioner (Q): Sir, how to deal with the expectations of parents?
Acharya Prashant (AP): See, it’s not about parents only. Everybody expects. Yes? Expectation means there is a desire. Desire means there is a sense of incompleteness. That there is something missing from life, right? That is what leads to the expectation that there is something missing from life.
Now, because you feel that there is something missing from life, you expect. You expect from the world, you expect from others, you expect from situations, you expect from luck, and you also expect from yourself. We have so many expectations even from ourselves. The root of all these expectations is an inner feeling of lack of fulfillment.
“There is something missing from my life, that’s why I am hoping and expecting. There is a gap here. I am hoping and expecting that the gap will be filled someday. Now I do not know what that gap is. Hence, I do not know what would really fill that gap. So, what do I do? I start filling that gap with useless things, with things that will not fill the gap that will not treat the disease.”
“My real requirement is something else, but I start expecting a lot of miscellaneous things. My real disease is something else, but I start trying a lot of fake treatments.”
Expecting from others is one of those fake treatments. And that others include sons and daughters. So, what is the real problem? That I have an inner sense of being incomplete, which every human being experiences, every human being. That’s why I said it’s not only about parents. Every human being has that deep sense of lack of fulfillment. And every human being deserves fulfillment.
