What Happens When You Stop Expecting So Much

This morning I went on an adapter plug hunt in Kuwait.

I already knew, logically, that I probably wouldn’t find what I needed. I’d searched online the night before and found nothing. The plug on my kitchen stove is an unusual one and this is a small country with limited electrical supplies. I knew all of this before I left the flat.

But I went anyway. Not with a plan, exactly. Just with a decision: I’ll go out, ask around, and see what happens. If I find one, wonderful. If I don’t, I’ll order one online and wait a month.

The first shop had nothing. The second shop sent me somewhere else. The third shop I walked into, the electrician listened carefully to what I needed, thought for a moment, and told me he didn’t think what I was looking for existed here. And then, without me asking, without hesitation, he said not to worry. He’d see what he could do.

He left. He came back with cord, a plug, and a wall socket. And he made me one.

I stood there genuinely moved. Not just by the kindness of it, though that was real, but by the particular quality of the surprise. It landed so fully because I hadn’t been expecting it. I had walked in hoping for something and prepared for nothing, and what I received was more than either.

This is what I’ve been thinking about lately. What becomes possible when we loosen our grip on how things are supposed to go.

A few years ago I started travelling differently.

I stopped reading too much about places before I arrived. I stopped building detailed itineraries and lists of things I absolutely had to see. I’d choose one or two things, maybe, and leave the rest open. Not empty, just open.

What I found was that the space I created by not filling everything in advance got filled by things I never could have planned.

This summer I cycled a long route through countryside and along the coast I hadn’t researched thoroughly. I planned only the essentials; the roads, where to sleep each night. Everything else I left until I arrived. Where to eat, what to see, which detours were worth taking; I asked the people I met along the way.

A man running a small guesthouse told me about a spot along the beach where you could sit and watch the sunset, one of those places that doesn’t exist in any guidebook because the people who know about it have never thought to write it down. A random cyclist I fell into conversation with pointed me down a track that turned into the most beautiful stretch of the entire trip. A group of elderly men at a café told me what they thought I should see along the coastal route that day, a detour into a forest I would never have found on my own.

Locals always know more than any guidebook does. They know the hidden places, the quiet spots, the experiences that don’t exist in search results. But they only tell you these things if you ask. And you only ask if you haven’t already filled all the space with your own plans.

When my bicycle chain fell off mid-route I sat on the side of the road for a moment and made a decision. This is part of it. Figuring out what to do next is part of the adventure, not an interruption to it. A stranger cycling past stopped, crouched down, and showed me how to fix it. We had a conversation; halting, full of gestures and laughter, that I still think about. None of that happens if the chain doesn’t fall off. None of that happens if I’m furious at the disruption to my schedule.

Getting lost, I’ve learned, is often how you find the best things.

I’m learning to bring this same approach to people and situations now. It’s harder. Much harder than leaving a travel itinerary open.

When we expect something from a person: a particular response, a certain kind of support, a reaction that matches what we were hoping for, and they give us something different, the gap between what we wanted and what we got is where disappointment lives. That gap is entirely made of expectation.

But when I go into a conversation without a fixed idea of how the other person should respond, something shifts. I’m more present. More genuinely curious about what they actually think rather than whether they’re confirming what I hoped they’d say. And when someone surprises me, with their kindness, their insight, their willingness to go out of their way, it lands so much more fully than it would have if I’d been waiting for it.

This is still very much a work in progress. I won’t pretend otherwise. There are people and situations where my expectations run high and stubborn and I’m aware of them the whole time. But I notice it helping most in the moments when I receive difficult news or an answer I didn’t want. Arriving without rigid expectations doesn’t mean arriving without hope. It means leaving room for whatever is actually true, rather than measuring it against the version I’d already decided on.

Living abroad asks this of us constantly, whether we’re ready for it or not.

We arrive in a new country with pictures in our minds. How the people will be. How the job will feel. How quickly we’ll make friends and find our rhythm and start to feel at home. What the food will taste like, what the streets will sound like, how the version of ourselves we’ll become there will look. And then reality arrives: complicated, surprising, textured, frequently nothing like the picture, and we measure it against the expectation we brought with us and find it lacking.

What if we arrived expecting it to be bumpy? What if we expected the paperwork to be confusing, the customs to be surprising, the friendships to take longer than we’d hoped? And then felt genuine relief and gratitude when things turned out easier than expected?

What if we expected challenges and felt thankful when they didn’t come, rather than expecting smoothness and feeling let down when it didn’t arrive?

What if we expected less and left more room for the electrician who makes you something from scratch? For the farmer who points you down the beautiful track? For the stranger who shows up exactly when you needed someone to?

I think about all the unexpected kindnesses this life has handed me. The old man who rode four hours on a bus in Japan just to make sure I found my way home. The stranger who ordered coffee for me in Vietnam when I couldn’t make myself understood. The doctor who came in on his day off at a hospital in Asia because there was a foreign patient who needed help.

None of these found me because I was expecting them. They found me because I was open enough to receive them when they arrived.

That, I think, is the whole practice. Not lowering your standards or abandoning your hopes. Just holding them a little more lightly. Leaving some space around them for what you haven’t imagined yet.

Because the things you haven’t imagined yet are often the best ones.