expectation – Sasha Dichter's Blog

Each day, as we get ready to go to work, we put on an outfit. It symbolizes something—to us, to the people around us. It’s the role we will be playing for the day.

It’s not only clothes that convey a story. Consciously or not, as we transition from home to work, we are putting on our work identity as surely as we put on an outfit. A lot of that identity come from the narrative that we tell ourselves.

“This is who I am in this situation. These are the contours, these are the expectations, these are the likely behaviors.”

Shifting that is not as easy as changing our shirt, or our hair. But it’s not as different as it seems.

What if you decided to wear something different today?

Generosity Day is tomorrow, and it’s hard not to stare at the #generosityday twitter search results and feel a little bit excited.

At the same time I’m realizing what a tricky thing expectation is. Last year, when I was hesitating about writing that first (outlandish, crazy) blog post announcing that we wanted to turn Valentine’s Day into Generosity Day, a friend pushed me over the edge by saying, “Go for it! The worst thing that happens is nothing, and no harm would come of that!”

That’s right.

Great things happen when you realize that no real harm will come from coming up short, but nothing will happen if you don’t try.

It’s possible that a few huge things will happen tomorrow that will catapult Generosity Day into the main- mainstream. It’s also possible that they won’t and that this will continue to be a grassroots, distributed effort that builds every year without some giant step-change between here and there.

Either way, Generosity Day will always be owned by everybody, for everybody, and we’ve got nothing to lose.

Thanks for being part of it.