What a World of Expectation

Christina

***This is a random narrative that I wrote after feeling inspired by Camus’ existential book The Stranger.


“Tell me a story,” she whispered as a delicate puff of warm air gently grazed against my ear.

I sighed. I was exasperated that her imagination was running rampant again while mine hardly ignited. She obviously yearned to hear whimsical stories woven from the entangled depths of my mind, but I was tired; I dare say, exhausted. And on second thought, my mind is not a labyrinth for her to run through simply because she demanded it.

I firmly told her, “Another time.”

She understood and slumped defeatedly by my side. Now, it was her turn to sigh. We stared silently beyond the horizon, admiring the majestic nature and the limitless horizon, yet a shared and unexpressed disappointment hung in the air.

The vacation was uneventful to say the least since we had hoped for mild and pleasant weather to stroll down the coast and frolic in the waves, to grill on the deck with the neighboring folks, and to gaze at all the stars and constellations that hung overhead in dark canvas of the night sky. Instead, our plans were foiled from the onset. The sky was bleak and cloudy, and the waters were murky, indications of a violent tempest. The weatherman, who predicted a tropical paradise, had failed us once again, and we were not surprised, just utterly disappointed. This weather persisted for days, almost the entire duration of our vacation, and our spirits appeared to mimic the gloomy weather in absolute unison.

Nonetheless, she was grateful and considerate, knowing that this trip had cost a fortune and knowing that I had used up my remaining vacation days for her. For being seven years old, she was wise beyond her age, so she wasn’t complaining. However, I still suffered the full blow of my own disappointment and regret. “If only, I hadn’t waited an extra week for this vacation, maybe the weather would have been nicer,” I repeatedly berated myself.

“It’s getting late,” I finally whispered, and instinctively, she walked over to her bed. I guess she decided that there was no need to drag out the night any longer past her bedtime since there was hardly anything stimulating to do. I tucked her in, and she innocently asked for a bedtime story again, even after I explicitly declined her request just moments ago. I sighed.

Then, unexpectedly, I inhaled deeply as I began to rummage through my brain for inspiration, for any story at all. She closed her eyes, anticipating a story with a complacent smirk on her face as she knew that I had given in and her wish was going to be granted.

Then, I began.

She grew up in a world full of expectation where every parent had a glisten in their eyes and an enthusiastic bounce in their stride; after all, their children were the apple of their eye. Her parents were no exception as they retained the unlikely notion that their daughter would attain success whether as the next entertainer like Shirley Temple or the next genius like Albert Einstein. She tried so hard to manifest this idealistic hope, but in school, she fell far behind. She felt like she was grasping at straws and always seemed to fall short of expectations regardless of the extent of her efforts. Her parents first acknowledged that their dreams for their daughter were too quixotic, and eventually, she too gave in to the overwhelming indications of failure and no longer attempted to alter what seemed like fate. After graduating college, she landed a second-rate job at a mediocre firm. She was the poster-child of average and lived the rest of her life until she died, unremembered and unrecognized, as if she had simply faded away into obscurity.

As I finished, I pondered where all that had come from. Before, I thought I was content with my life, but this story told otherwise. I looked over at her, expecting her to react to the story with her usual enthusiastic bob of her head or her sincere disapproval, indicated by a protruding pout. There was neither. She had dozed off into her own head of imagination during my story. While I was left to contemplate the degree of dissatisfaction with my own life, she blissfully, yet ignorantly, lived in her own world, undisturbed and immersed in her dreams. Our parallel lives were ironically complete opposites. Awareness and oblivion. That intrigued me and made me feel sorry for her; wait, actually more for myself. I was clearly confused and no conclusion could be drawn tonight, so I sighed again until the darkness finally overtook me and I gave in to the enveloping night.