Expectations are useless

Are expectations ever helpful?

If it’s really true that happiness equals reality minus expectations, then the less expectations you have of anything—good, bad, neutral—the happier you are, isn’t it?

Case in point for expecting something good:

I had a lovely memory of a place in Japan, but tried to relive the nostalgia by bringing my family there. It didn’t work. The lovely memory wasn’t relived, and a worse new memory was made in its place.

Or it would be the expectations of a viral launch of a new indie product. But it fell flat, and expectations gave way to disappointment, and losing interest in the project. If I didn’t have any expectations or less, perhaps I would have continued working on it.

Another point, but for expecting something bad:

We’ve always traveled in cities and places we were familiar with, and this time, I was worried about something bad happening when traveling in an unfamiliar city with the kid. But it never did. So it was just pointless, anxiety threadmill.

I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened. – Mark Twain

In both, there were expectations.
In both, it was pointless.

Ergo, expectations are never helpful.

Useless.
No utility whatsoever.

Convince me otherwise.