Avoiding "Psycho Kitty" Syndrome

“I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path.”

Dalai Lama

My cat is crazy. Wait. I'd better restate that. My cat has illuminated one of the many ways in which we are all crazy. Let me explain:

The other morning - 5 a.m. to be precise - I woke to find Sagan purring on my chest. How sweet, I thought, petting him for a moment. The next moment - Damn, now I'm really awake and have to pee. Not wanting to disturb the tranquility, I scooped him up and carried his sweet, purring self down the hall with me. When we reached the bathroom, I started to gently lower him to the ground, half expecting him to curl up at my feet in feline bliss. Nope. As soon as his back paws touched the floor, he sprang up as if it were hot coals, lashing out with his claws, trying to hold onto anything he could find. His claws found my hand. And my foot. Double Damn.

I ended up throwing him into the hallway and he ran away terrified, leaving me bewildered and bleeding. What just happened? I wondered, now totally awake and in pain. The answer presented itself almost immediately. The bath mat wasn't on the ground, it was draped over the bathtub after one of Katie's more adventurous mermaid bath times. The floor was bare - its hardly ever bare - and it wasn't what Sagan had been expecting.

Seriously, though. Is that any reason to go all psycho kitty on me? Apparently, it is. I would like to tell you that the following realization took me days and days to discover, that it was such a psychological leap I couldn't identify it at first, but that would be a lie. The truth is, I go all psycho in my own way, for pretty much the same reason - things don't go the way I expected they would.
 
Apparently, I have all kinds of expectations - high ones and low ones: about how others should behave, how much traffic there should be, and whether or not I should be able to do various challenging yoga poses on any given day. There's really no rhyme or reason to it. Pick a topic, I'm sure I have an expectation about it. Trouble is, I'm not generally aware of my expectations. I don't think I'm alone in this. Which left me wondering: how much frustration is generated by forming expectations about things we have very little control over? A great deal, is my guess.

So today, I'm going to try something new. Instead of forming expectations about what the world will bring, I will set an intention about what I will bring to the world. My strength. My flexibility. My balance. I hope that will prepare me to face whatever expectation is shattered before my eyes. But please forgive me if I go a little psycho kitty from time to time. I'm still getting the hang of this.

Peace.