expectations redefined

From the very beginning of this blog (Beirut Rhapsodies) from the very first post I wrote, I chose a topic: I chose to talk about a generation of women entering the 21st and the trying to make sense of our place in this new world, whether it be in career, family, love and all three. As I put it back then, over four years ago: "It's the story about women in their twenties, struggling to find their balance." I wanted to write a novel, but didn't know what about. I started the blog just to get back into writing mode.

So it's funny to realize that years later, I am in fact writing a book about exactly that: women in their twenties, through different generations and different periods of time. I guess somehow I was already onto to something without even realizing it.

The reason I mention this, is because of what I want to talk about today. A conversation I have had again and again, with so many girls around me, and I really believe that it's the essence of understanding relationships in our time. Expectations need to be redefined.

It feels unimaginable, impossible even, that we should expect to have the same kinds of relationships that they had 60 years ago, or even 30 years ago. Yet we do.

Technology alone has redefined the way we communicate, the way one might connect with someone. Take long distance relationships for example. For my grandparents, their courtship was a time of letters exchanged between Beirut and Cairo. My grandmother would send a letter, and then she would count: if it took 8 days to reach Cairo, and if he wrote back that very same day and sent the letter the next, then she would receive her answer 17 days later at the earliest. I have friends in long distance relationships right now, and they can't go 17 hours without speaking to each other through at least one of the dozen available apps.

Imagine waiting 17 days for someone to reply to your love letter. We can't imagine it. When we see the "last seen" stamp on Whatsapp (or the wonderful new addition of the blue ticks), we can't even wait 17 minutes. The other day my friend P. panicked because her boyfriend was "last seen" at 8pm and it was 11pm and she didn't understand how he could go three hours without checking his Whatsapp (what the hell was he doing?)... turns out he was sleeping.

And that's just one example. We've lost so many fundamental pillars to our inter-human connections --patience, privacy, freedom... Yesterday, T. told me her boyfriend sometimes goes an entire day without calling her, because he needs his space and she just doesn't get it. Now if T. lived in 1949 like my grandmother, getting one phone call a month would be magic. Not the norm. Not the minimum requirement. But maybe not all of us are wired to keep up with the demands of technology. Maybe some of us need to disappear for a day, or two, because that's how we were wired to start with. And if we'd just readjust our expectations --if we were able to understand that people weren't created to keep up and (dis)function in perfect tune with technology-- we'd all be so much happier, wouldn't we?