..she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn’t know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. .. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. 

–Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

In the months prior to my retirement from a 40 year educational career, I found myself standing around the gate, expecting things. Like Zora Neale Hurston’s protagonist, Janie, I didn’t know exactly what things I should expect. Still, the undeniable mantel of expectation hung from my shoulders like a cape. Tied around my neck, it trailed behind me as I navigated the obligatory retirement paperwork and filed a lifetime of work into manila folders. It was a constant reminder that when school bells no longer ruled my days, then I would fly, my cape of expectations billowing happily in the breeze.

What to expect after you retire your alarm clock and teacher clothes? What to expect after you no longer drink lounge coffee or spend your lunch hours doing cafeteria duty? What to expect when no one expects much of anything from you? Hmmm.  .  .

Perhaps it is our nature to expect the next phase (of whatever) to be better, grander, more noble than the last. The urgency that propels us forward is a compulsion that is hard to deny. So today sucked, tomorrow will suck less. So this job is simply a job, your next position will be a career extraordinaire. So you settled for this relationship, this place, this idea, you will not settle in the future.

Americans are largely a “pull- yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps-go-west-young-person” sort. Expectation courses through our veins, the giddy lifeblood of the hopeful. We leave sod homes on dry, desolate prairies for gold mining camps and the promise of prosperity. On factory lines, we toil and dream, toil and dream, our heads bent to the task before us, but our souls fixed on a life beyond. In classrooms, we stomach busy work–the miserable fodder of some “professionals”–as we imagine the pathway to significance.

But what if one buoyed by years of expectation finds herself first treading water and then sinking? For expectation is not only a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future but a belief that someone will or should achieve something. It was this belief, like the lead weight we had to retrieve from the bottom of the deep end during lifeguard training, that began to pull me under. It was this belief–that I should achieve something–that pinned me to the pool floor. And it was this belief that left me breathless to break the water’s surface where some kind soul would throw me a lifeline.

Expectation at the beginning of a life is so much sunnier than at the end of a life. In youth, much seems possible, even probable. For a number of years, I genuinely expected that I would join the Ice Capades as a professional skater. Never mind the fact that I had only skated (badly) on Kearney Lake a few times in my entire life. I could easily brush this detail away, for the vision of sequinned splendor on the ice was blindingly hopeful. Young expectation accepts delayed gratification as a necessary rite of passage. When I grow up, I will . . .  Although there may be occasional frustration in this delay, more often there is comfort in the promise of something that will surely happen at sometime.

But expectation that occurs as a life is winding down–let’s say at retirement–is clothed in apprehension. Whereas earlier expectation is a stout stem that will produce a certain bloom, later expectation is a gossamer filament in a lifetime web. It is tenuous, dubious, slight and suspect. Passing time dictates no promise of delay, no prolonged rite of passage. Time is literally ticking.

In her short story, “Yours,” American author, Mary Robison, writes:

He wanted to tell her, from the greater perspective he had, that to own only a little talent, like his, was an awful, plaguing thing; that being only a little special meant you expected too much, most of the time, and liked yourself too little. He wanted to assure her that she had missed nothing.

After an evening of pumpkin carving, Clark has just told his wife, Allison, ʺYour jack‐o‐lanterns are much, much better than mine.ʺ His cancer-ridden wife will die that night, a few weeks earlier than expected, and he yearns to make her believe that she has lived a good life, that she has missed nothing. As tragic as her impending death is, the “awful, plaguing thing” of his life–to “own only a little talent”–is just as tragic. At least to him. He is painfully aware of the fact that he has “expected too much, most of the time, and liked [himself] too little.”

Herein lies the blessing and the curse of being “a little special”: for some, the expectation of achieving something, of becoming something more special comes with a healthy dose of self-doubt. Perhaps even self-loathing. You find yourself expecting that the little bit of talent you have will burgeon into the achievement you have imagined. Even in the direst moments of self-doubt, you whisper: “Maybe. Someday.” But then self-doubt rolls in, a returning storm that blackens the maybes and blows the somedays into another, rosier country. Then you look into the mirror and accuse: “Who do you think you are?”

I recall a 20/20 episode that featured five octogenarians. These men and women were growing and changing, becoming better selves as they played in symphony orchestras, trained for marathons, or taught university courses. In short, they were nothing short of amazing individuals. Here were achievers who were not only meeting but surpassing expectations. As the television segment ended, I remember thinking, “Is it too late for me to take up the cello?”

And then there is the issue of what to achieve. Some of these octogenarians were continuing pursuits and talents they had cultivated their entire lives; others were taking up entirely new ventures. Although I have nothing but admiration for 86-year-olds who train for the Boston Marathon, I’m quite confident that I will not be taking to the ice for future Ice Capade performances. So, realistically, what achievement should I expect?

In looking back over years of work–both parenting and teaching–I admit that my days were filled with doing. And certainly in all this doing, there were achievements: building a family, making a home, growing into a good teacher, deepening my faith, and forging countless relationships with great people. I realize that many would look at me as one who had achieved much. And all of this made my post-retirement standing around the gate, expecting things surprising, at best, and ungrateful, at worst. Why expect more?

And why not just be? Isn’t that a natural and kind progression: doing that ultimately leads to being? Being is undervalued, understated, and underappreciated. When I think of those people with whom I feel most at home, they are those who have perfected the act of being. Just being in the moment, content to listen, to comfort with their sheer presence, and to convince you that there is no one else they’d rather be with and no place else they’d rather be. Ironically, being may be the greatest achievement of a life well-lived.

So maybe standing around the gate isn’t such a bad thing. Standing without expecting, that is. For if, like Hurston’s Janie, I can stand at the gate knowing that world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether, then this is more than enough.