Anticipation: Nearly as Bad as Potential

You know how it is when you are really excited about something that is coming up? You can’t get to sleep the night before. You dream about it when you finally do get to sleep. You set it up in your head as being the most amazing thing in the world, so how can it possibly live up to the insane expectations you set for it? The simple answer is that it can’t. Nothing is perfect, so when we dream of perfection we are bound to be let down.

It’s like potential, that other word that can really be a curse instead of a blessing. You see, both potential and anticipation completely disappear when something happens to fulfill them. Think about it. You’ve waited all year for Christmas, but then it comes and that’s it. It is either really great, really horrible, or just acceptable, and it’s done. There goes the anticipation. How did it feel? Or what about when you have the potential to be a great dancer? Having that potential is really a rock hanging around your neck, because it can only go two ways. Either you become that great dancer, which effectively kills the “potential” tag, or you don’t, which means you still have to try to live up to something you’ve still never achieved in the first place.

But potential has the ability to be worse than anticipation, because even when something doesn’t quite live up to its anticipation, it can still be somewhat good. Case in point: Star Wars Episode III. It’s a really good movie, but it isn’t as amazing as we were led to believe. And then there’s Guns ‘n Roses’ Chinese Democracy. The wait was nearly interminable as Axl Rose kept teasing us with possible release dates, and keeping the music deeply under wraps. Then the album was finally released, ending the anticipation, and promptly failed. That’s it, in black and white. Then we look forward to the next thing, hoping it is either as advertized or close, instead of being a big dud, but there is always something else to anticipate. Not so with potential.

If you don’t live up to your potential, what else do you have? The average person has the potential to be really good at a finite amount of things, and usually we get frustrated when we haven’t lived up to our potential in one of those things. That frustration can lead to a lack of confidence, which in turn affects everything else we had potential to achieve. It can be a vicious cycle. That’s why potential is worse than anticipation.

Now, don’t quote me on this. I do recognize that some people are really persistent, even when they haven’t lived up to potential in the past. There are some success stories of people who haven’t gotten frustrated, or who have used it as fuel to achieve better things in teh future, and that’s wonderful. Yes, that’s just amazing. Almost as good as Chinese Democracy.

Sam