Lately and by lately, I mean the last 2 weeks of February my mind has been toiling with the sources of difficulty. Feebly, I have landed on a reason for difficulty: unmet expectations. Let me explain in the micro.
Getting a cup of coffee. This seemingly simple process contains the perfect example of expectations creating difficulty. I am old enough to remember a time before an app dictated the transaction. Getting a cup of coffee was simply exiting the car, go into the coffee place, pay actual cash and receiving the coffee. Then getting back into your car and driving away with coffee. A simple expectation met. Now this process has been derailed but the expectation is the same simplicity. Now this basic interaction has been complicated. The app suggests a type of coffee other than coffee that involves the expertise of a certified barista along with 5 people to contribute to the coffee. The app has a pay feature that is supposed to make paying seamless but that is also a possible stumbling block so another expectation unmet. Oh, don’t forget my points, I better get my points! Then the app shared by thousands pours orders into the store simultaneously, so the previous simple expectation is flooded by similar expectations compounding your single transaction by other people’s soon to be unmet expectations. When you selfishly ordered you never thought about competing with others for that cup of coffee. Then you arrive at the store with your expectation that this transaction will be simple because your history of coffee purchases was only met expectations. You cannot imagine the Herculean effort it now takes to get your basic expectation met. You were not prepared to enter the store to stand aimlessly with other people with similar unmet expectations. Thus, difficulty encountered when you never imagined difficulty. By 7 am, difficulty has resulted in a basic transaction not from the coffee but from the idea that you expected this to be an easy process.
That is the creation of difficulty. We go to the doctor and expect resolution like a one two punch. We are not expecting to encounter difficulty because our transaction must have occurred thousands of times before, so someone has already figured this out, right? The problem is that our expectations are formed in a vacuum. We encounter something and immediately consider this situation like a preselected problem already solved by Apple or Google or AI. Our expectations are usually formed out of assumptions and ignorance. We naturally assume that all situations are like the cup of coffee. Simple. Realistically, now all of our situations are like the process to get a cup of coffee. Difficult.
Albert R. Hartley