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People plan. The ability to arrange future according to our needs is said to be one of the factors which distinguishes us from animals. Voyagers plan their holidays, the young couples - their future homes, while the contents of menu may be of some importance to a cook. However, very often happens that the future cannot be made in our way: the place of destination of the voyager proves to be not interesting, the couple gets divorced, and the cook is fired from the work. Then a question arises: what has gone wrong? It is definitely not what we expected. The answer might be that the differences between expectations and reality are caused by our insufficient imagination .
Sometimes we do not posses the gift of picturing in mind the future at all.. More often, our imagination is not good enough to do so, which turn out to be the source of our disappointments and dissatisfactions. We read a holiday advertisement in which there is written that the hotel is ten minutes from the sea, and some of the rooms are provided with the stereo equipment. What is the most important, the cost of such holidays is 75 percent lower than the similar ones offered by other travel agencies. So a happy holiday maker strikes the bargain, buys a two - week stay somewhere abroad, goes there and is very surprised. The hotel is of the lowest quality, the stereo equipment is only in the room of the manager, to mention only some of the inconveniences. Reality proves to be different from what it was to be. Why ? The miserable traveller did not thought of the existence of a catch which must have been in the offer cheaper by 75 percent than others. His imagination proved to be too poor .
Very often we are disappointed by the reality because of our imagination being too rich. We tend to beautify reality, or simply believe that something will be better in the future. Not always it is the case. No matter whether it is a pupil who goes to school, a woman who has just got married, or film-goer who wants to see a new movie, they all believe that their school, marriage or film will be a very good one, to say the least. Nevertheless, when the reality has been checked, they find that it was supposed to be better, but proved to be worse. Worse than what, one may ask. Probably than the ideal picture of it, created in our minds by means of employing our imagination, which once again happened to be incompetent .
Fortunately, reality is sometimes better than our secret plans concerning it. There are some people who have a very low opinion about themselves., who depreciate their value, treating themselves inferior to others. However, when they have to verify their abilities it proves that they are as gifted as their peers. There are many students who imagine a big failure which will be caused by the exam they have just taken. Still, when the results of it are announced, many of them pass this exam , some even better than others. In their case, the reality proves to be different because of the tendency to imagine themselves as being in constant dire situations .
Expectations are nothing more than hope that something will happen, sometimes based on the knowledge of reality, more often on our imagination. It is this imagination which causes so many distortions between expectations and the real life. Imagination is very often a substitute for the things and situations which are not likely to happen in our life. It is a very subjective notion, perceived by every one of us in a different way. That is why the application of it should be limited in some way while planning our future. Sometimes we should be more down-to-earth. Otherwise we might be surprised finding that the hotel is too far, the film not very interesting, and our marriage is fraught with problems .
