You know the funny thing about this photo? I shot it in Vietnam. It’s at a sort of Vietnamese Disneyland called Sun World where they’ve built a small French style town on a jungle covered mountaintop. Several cable cars take you to and from the town or even to different parts of the mountaintop. Nothing else is built on the mountain leaving the vast dense forest untouched and creating a captivating sense of isolation.

There is no expecting what might be found—I certainly didn’t expect to be walking the back streets of a French town here in central Vietnam! I’m finding I can be quick to overthink what will be in my near future and over define how satisfied I will be with that future. Expectations can create limitations for our sense of hope, happiness, and spirit of adventure. What and how I feel about my expectations for the near future become a sort of repeating template on my further outlook.

I’ve never liked the expression, “Keep your expectations low…that way you’ll never be disappointed.” Maintaining low expectations makes good things feel somewhat undeserved and even unwanted. Needless to say, I feel it is important to expect more—expect more from life and expect more from ourselves—in order to connect with the ever present joys flowing alongside us. 

I had already been in Vietnam for nearly a month and even though I knew we would be going to this mountain top French town, my diminished expectations of Vietnam and even all of travel had held me back from the freedoms of joy, curiosity, and excitement. I’m also finding that keeping high expectations is something that needs to be worked at. We have a created idea of what will be found, and that is nearly impossible to shake off. I find that I can give those ideas a positive spin by thinking of a few little fun details I hadn’t thought of (just 1 is needed) and my mind begins to populate the future with a lot of these unaccounted for—yet still undefined—things to look forward to. Ready to start expecting more?