expectation isn't the same as desire

Some people strive to relinquish all expectations and live moment to moment. That is admirable. But I think the important idea here is to take responsibility for our expectations. Get them out into the light. Examine them. Talk about them. If they involve other people, talk to the people involved. Find out if they have similar expectations. See if they’re realistic.

to hope was to expect

Expectations are what destroy happiness — whether it’s in our relationships, with our kids, or with our work. Expectations are why so many people are so unhappy today, even in a world with so much abundance.

we need to realize these are only expectations; they belong to us, and we’re not always boss.

Expectations are resentments under construction.

When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expectation must come to an end.

As Anne Lamott said, “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” We have the tendency to visualize an entire scenario or conversation or outcome, and when things don’t go the way we’d imagined, disappointment can become resentment. This often happens when our expectations are based on outcomes we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react.

An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.

Even the love for and from our families and friends is based on expectations and conditions.
Inevitably, these expectations and conditions are not met, and the details of real life become the thread that creates a nightmare.

Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.

You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.

Living without expectations is hard but, when you can do it, good. Living without hope is harder, and that is bad. You have got to have hope, and you must'nt shirk it. Love, after all, hopeth all things. But maybe you must learn, and it is hard learning, not to hope out loud, especially for other people. You must not let your hope turn into expectation.

Expectation always introduces an element of bias, because it anticipates outcomes without waiting to see what actually happens. However, if expectations are consistently modified in the face of experience in a (*)-like or Bayesian manner, then over time, the influence of initial expectations will tend to diminish as new experiences “tune” expectations to actual frequencies through the reduction of prediction error. As experience grows in magnitude and diversity, Bayesians point out, initial expectations tend to “wash out,” and individuals who began from different starting assumptions, but encountered similar experience, will tend to converge in their expectations. And importantly, they will tend to converge on the actual “natural statistics” of their environment