this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
267 points (98.9% liked)
Greentext
7968 readers
1246 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I disagree. Zero expectations leads to rotting if you're down already. As I understand it, zero expectations almost equals zero trust.
"Expectations" are different from "goals". One of the easiest paths to chronic unhappiness is to treat happiness as an expectation.
Happiness is fundamentally transitory and unsuitable for a goal, although setting up the circumstances for it to occur regularly isn't a bad idea. Being at peace, satisfied, not bored, and others relevant to you are much more consistent and achievable, and you only need to rely on yourself to do so (happiness is often circumstantial).
Oh, yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to imply "don't treat happiness as an expectation; treat it as a goal!", because like you said, it's fundamentally incompatible with what a goal is. I like to consider the SMART criteria, and even though it fails all of them (except 'T' if you insist you have a deadline to be happy), it fails 'A' the hardest, because a goal as such is literally defined by how it's oriented toward taking an action. Even if you think your goal is "I will be happy by doing X today", then – as long as you think you can do X and have a plan – what you actually have is the goal "I will do X today" with the faulty, tacked-on expectation of "and that will make me feel happy".
Call me pedantic, but that's not zero expectations. I 100% agree on the happiness expectations to depression pipeline, but zero expectations to me is expecting a ROI of 0, that is expecting any effort to be wasteful.
expectations / reality