Blog 37 – Managing Expectations …Ms Paige Turner tells a porkie pie on each blog. Be the first to spot it this bi-month and you win yourself three free handout sheets of your choice …
‘Managing Expectations’: now that’s a quirky little phrase which has recently popped out of mouths, isn’t it?
Miss Trial told me that as a mother, I have ‘Great Expectations’. When one’s expectations exceed the reality then one faces huge disappointments, whether that be who you have assumed will accept a wedding invitation or who you assume will buy your newly published book. If they don’t you can find yourself in ‘Disappointment Land’.
Cosmetic surgeons and beauty therapists talk about ‘managing expectations’ or not having too great expectations for one’s age or lifestyle.
I spoke to Master Sound Advice on this topic of ‘expectations’ and he said that it was best to ‘under promise’ and ‘over deliver’. This way expectations will not overtake reality.
It may seem as though I am switching the subject here – but be patient and you will not be disappointed – for I was telling the truth on my last blog when I said that I never fib on St Valentine’s Day even though the illustrious John Moore said that I may have fibbed and he quoted a Cretan who said, “All Cretans lie, and as I am a Cretan is that a lie?”
Well, I’ll tell you what is. It’s something called ‘paradoxical conceit’ as in Shakespeare’s love sonnet: Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. The last line is: If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ and no man ever loved. It’s conceited as the narrator is saying he can’t be wrong. Similar to his famous words ‘I do believe her though I know she lies …’
Well, let me finish off in a circular fashion. Anyone who tells you that they are in the business of ‘managing expectations’ is probably telling a porkie pie.
Caroline Francis spotted that it wasn’t Easterkerke Church but Westerkerke Church in Amsterdam and she gets three handout sheets of her choice and if she carries on being the first to spot the fib she may be ascending to the heights of a Creative Ink scholarship.
Creative Ink Summer Thursday’ Get that Book’ Course is now full and one place left on Tuesday ‘Get Inspired’.
The Shakespeare is indeed paradoxical conceit – ie becuse the poem has been written, means that the poet is right about the nature of true love. But the John Morroe quote is not the same. It is known as Epidemendes Paradox or the liar’s paradox. so the porky is to say that the John Morore quote is paradoxical conceit.
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Hope you are having a good time .
I have now edited my story to 400 words -looking fowrd to sending it to you when you are back.