Expectation
12 December 2005
Berkeley, CA
What are expectations? Ex-pectere means “to look forward”. In addition to the current meanings to the word, there is also an archaic one. Expect also means “to wait” or “to stay”. From this meaning there is a quality of standing still while looking forward. With this in mind, how do I hold the distinction between expectation and anticipation?
Anticipate comes from ante-capere, and capere means “to take”. Anticipation, then, is a kind of taking before there is an offering. In my imagination I create something I want to have, or to occur in my life. My anticipation is expressed in the images I create that make it as if this thing, or this occurrence, has already come into being. Anticipation is a taking, maybe even a stealing, from the future.
Just how different is expectation form this? Isn’t it another way of stealing from the future? As I was looking into these words, another emerged that is related in some ways to capere. That word is heave, as in “to heave a heavy rock”. In Middle English it is heven, and in Old English it is hebbe, which means “to lift”.
Maybe anticipate is on a different axis than expect. Rather than looking forward, anticipate has a quality of lifting up, or at least looking up. Some quality of raising up. Whereas expectation has a more expansive feel to it – of looking out and forward to the horizon line both in terms of space and time. And there can be a somewhat neutral sense to the word. If I am standing still while looking forward, and not anticipating a good thing or a bad thing, a happy event or a sad one, just looking, then there is a quality of waiting for whatever is “out there” to be offered to me, instead of me grabbing it from the future. Taking from the future what does not belong to me yet, blinds me in the present to what does belong to me now.