Super-sizing your expectations: Has it happened to you?

Today is Monday but to call it that seems awfully mundane, coming right after Super Bowl Sunday. Shouldn’t it at least be called Super Monday?

We Americans are super at using the word super. We have our Superman, Super 8s and Super Mario, not to mention our propensity to super-size our fast food. By choosing to use the word, we create a parallel set of expectations. We raise the bar when we levy the super tag.

The trouble with many Super Bowls is that they’ve fallen far short of the expectation. This year’s game lived up to the hype, but what about the rest of the production? The game has come a long way in the 54 years since $12 would get you a seat at the game. Many people watch the game for its commercials, widely touted as the most creative (and expensive) you’ll see all year. Frankly, I thought very few of this year’s ads were exceptional.

Expectations are a huge part of your family history. We gauge much of our success or failure by plotting our results against our expectations. Or the expectations of others.

As children, our goals frequently are created by parents, teachers and others of influence in our lives. I had friends whose parents paid them a sliding scale for grades that met or exceeded expectations. Other friends were motivated by the fear of what would happen to them if they fell short.

In many families, children are expected to follow in their parents’ footsteps, whether that be operating the family farm, taking over the family business or carrying on the family tradition in a particular occupation, such as law or medicine. Perhaps you know of offspring who rebelled at this notion for a while, yet ultimately slipped back into the familial pattern.

In my era, many young women were dissuaded from attending college, partly because so many occupations were largely closed to them at that time but more likely because previous generations truly believed that women were destined to be wives and mothers exclusively.

Look over your family history and identify those people whose successes exceeded the known expectations of that time. These are among the true pioneers of your family.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Comments

[Joy Neal Kidney]

I think that the WWII generation certainly exceeded expectations, especially those with a farming background--became officers, pilots, etc.

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