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The Expectations That Shape Us

The Expectations That Shape Us

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

I thought he was merely assessing my literary exploits when, out of the blue, one day, he asked me. “Have you read Bernard Shaw’s play ‘Pygmalion’?”

I shook my head.

He smiled. “Then let me tell you what years of research discovered after that play.” He explained that researchers became curious about a simple but unsettling question: What actually makes people rise—or sink—over time? Not intelligence alone. Not talent alone. Something far quieter was at work: Expectations.

They found that children who were, by all objective measures, average began to perform above average—not because their intelligence suddenly changed, but because the environment around them treated them as if they were capable of more. Teachers spoke to them differently. Parents responded to them differently. The tone shifted. The belief shifted. And slowly, the children shifted too. At this point, he paused and gave the idea a name. “This phenomenon,” he said, “is known as the Pygmalion Effect.”

He explained that the term derives from a play by George Bernard Shaw, in which a simple change in how a person is treated—spoken to, respected, expected of—gradually transforms who that person becomes. The idea is straightforward but profound: people tend to become what significant others expect of them. “It’s not magic,” he said. “It’s psychology—and moral influence.”

“What’s fascinating,” he continued, “is that nothing magical was added. No special training. No extraordinary resources. Only expectation.” When a child senses that the people around him genuinely expect him to be thoughtful, capable, dignified, and responsible, something internal reorganizes. He begins to act in ways that justify that expectation. Not consciously at first. Almost instinctively.

I thought of moments from my own life. There were teachers whose classrooms felt different. They didn’t flatter us. They didn’t shout motivational slogans. They simply assumed we would rise to the occasion. And somehow, we did. Then there were others who treated us as if mediocrity were inevitable. In those spaces, even effort felt pointless.

He nodded when I shared this. “Exactly,” he said. “People don’t just live up to standards. They live up to the way they are seen.” He leaned forward. “Now imagine,” he said, “what happens when a child grows up hearing—explicitly or implicitly—that he is careless, unreliable, or disappointing.” Those words don’t just describe behavior. They sculpt identity. And identity, once shaped, begins to defend itself. He contrasted this with a different approach. “What if,” he asked, “instead of saying ‘Why are you like this?’ we said, ‘I expect better from you—because I know better exists in you’?” Not angrily. Not sarcastically. Calmly. Consistently.

He emphasized that expectations are effective only when they are sincere. Empty praise doesn’t shape character. But quiet confidence does. “When you treat someone as honest,” he said, “you make honesty easier. When you treat someone as dignified, you invite dignity.” He gave an example that struck me: Two children spilled a glass of water. One is told, “You’re always careless.” The other is told, “You’re usually careful—this seems like a mistake.” Same incident. Different futures. One child learns a label. The other learns responsibility.

He reminded me that the Pygmalion Effect doesn’t stop in childhood. “It works in marriages,” he said. “In workplaces. In friendships. Even in how you speak to yourself.” When I expect myself to fail, my effort weakens before I even begin. When I expect growth—even slow, imperfect growth—I stay engaged. Then he said something that unsettled me. “Be careful,” he said, “because you are constantly teaching people who they are in your presence.” My silence can teach insignificance. My impatience can teach incompetence. My trust can teach responsibility. None of this happens overnight. But over time, it becomes reality. He paused and added, “This is not manipulation. This is moral responsibility.” If expectations can quietly elevate people, then careless expectations can quietly damage them as well.

I realized something uncomfortable. Many times, I thought I was being realistic—when I was actually being limiting. I thought I was being honest—when I was unknowingly shrinking someone’s sense of possibility. He noticed the shift in my expression. “This,” he said gently, “is why this idea is such an eye-opener. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”

He ended with a thought that stayed with me long after the conversation ended. “You don’t raise people by correcting them constantly,” he said. “You raise them by holding a vision of who they can become—and refusing to let go of it too easily.”

Expectations are invisible. But their consequences are not. And once I understood that, I began to ask a new question—not just about others, but about myself: What expectations am I living under—and which ones am I quietly passing on?

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Producing a Genius Vs. Building a System

Producing a Genius Vs. Building a System

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

We were sitting on a quiet corner of the veranda when the conversation took an unexpected turn. The evening breeze was gentle, but the discussion grew heavy—weighted with questions that rarely get asked honestly.

“I once asked someone what they were proud of as a Pakistani,” I said, stirring my tea absent-mindedly. “They told me, ‘We produced Abdus Salam.’”

He didn’t respond immediately. There was a long pause—thoughtful, almost uneasy. “Did we really produce him?” he finally asked.

That question lingered in the air. It didn’t sound angry or dismissive. It sounded like a search for truth.

“I asked the same thing,” I replied. “Did we produce him? Or did he produce himself despite us?”

He leaned back slightly. “There’s a big difference between producing a single exceptional individual and building an institutional culture of excellence.”

That sentence hit me harder than I expected.

“You don’t create excellence by deciding to train someone into one specific skill—like making a good software engineer or a brilliant scientist,” he continued. “You create excellence when you build whole personalities. When education shapes character, curiosity, ethics, and critical thinking. When it nurtures depth, not just output.”

I nodded. My mind traveled back to classrooms I had seen—overcrowded, underfunded, and driven by rote memorization rather than wonder. Places where survival outweighed exploration.

“Our problem,” he went on, “is that we never invested in institutions. We never made education a national priority. Look at our budgets—education barely gets scraps. Health too. These are not our priorities.”

I thought of hospitals where families run around struggling to buy basic medicines. Of schools without proper libraries, labs, or trained teachers. Of children whose intelligence fades slowly because no one nurtures it.

“If education were truly our priority,” he said quietly, “we wouldn’t be waiting for a miracle every fifty or hundred years. We wouldn’t be clinging to one Nobel Prize as proof of greatness.”

That stung—because it was true.

“When a society doesn’t invest in systems,” I reflected aloud, “it becomes dependent on accidents. On rare individuals who rise through sheer will, talent, and suffering.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Abdus Salam didn’t emerge because the system supported him. He emerged despite the system. He climbed despite the obstacles, not because of support.”

Silence settled between us again.

I remembered a young student I once met in a rural school—a boy who built makeshift machines from scrap metal, powered tiny fans using broken batteries. He had ideas that sparkled in his eyes, but his school had no science lab, no trained teacher, no future pathway. I often wondered where that boy would end up.

“Without institutions,” I said slowly, “talent becomes fragile. It depends on chance encounters, on rare mentors, on extraordinary personal resilience.”

“And most people don’t survive that,” he added. “Not because they lack ability—but because the burden becomes too heavy to carry alone.”

We sat with that truth.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “nations that progress don’t wait for heroes. They build roads so that ordinary people can walk toward excellence without bleeding on every step.”

That sentence stayed with me.

It made me realize how deeply we misunderstand pride. We feel proud of individuals, but we hesitate to take responsibility for the systems that allow individuals to flourish. We celebrate genius as if it were proof of collective success—when often it is proof of collective neglect.

“If tomorrow another Abdus Salam is born in a forgotten village,” I said quietly, “will we recognize them early? Will we nurture them? Will we protect them?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

“Only if we stop treating health and education as expenses,” he replied finally, “and start treating them as investments in our future.”

That night, as I walked home, I kept thinking: A nation is not known by one shining star in a dark sky. A nation is known by how brightly its entire sky is allowed to glow.

Until we learn to build constellations instead of waiting for isolated stars, our pride will remain borrowed—and our potential, largely abandoned.

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When the Pyramid Breaks: Self-Transcendence at Any Stage

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs seems a good abstract of how people generally progress in their motives. At the bottom are the basics: food, shelter, safety. Then come the needs for belonging, esteem, and finally self-actualization — the desire to become what one is capable of becoming. The model struck a chord because it felt true to everyday life. We all know how hard it is to think about philosophy when hungry, or to pursue creative goals when worried about survival.

And yet, real life often surprises us.

When Life Breaks the Pyramid

History and ordinary life both tell stories that don’t quite fit the pyramid. A child who offers her candy to a friend who has none. A laborer who shares his meager lunch with a stranger. A soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades. Or closer to daily experience: a student rushing to an exam but stopping to take an injured person to the hospital.

None of these people had “completed the lower rungs” of Maslow’s ladder before acting. They acted in the moment, beyond themselves, and sometimes at great personal cost. These glimpses remind us that self-transcendence isn’t reserved for the comfortable and secure. It is a possibility seeded in every human heart, ready to appear in unexpected moments.

Viktor Frankl and Meaning in Suffering

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, saw this vividly in the concentration camps. In a place stripped of food, safety, and dignity, he still saw prisoners share their last crust of bread, comfort others, or choose to suffer with dignity rather than despair. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning insists that meaning is not something we wait to reach after other needs are met. It is something we can choose, even in the midst of pain.

This challenges the neatness of the pyramid. If self-transcendence is possible in Auschwitz, then it cannot be locked away at the top of a hierarchy. It is not an “extra.” It is a hidden flame, capable of burning even in the darkest conditions.

Beyond Self-Actualization

Maslow himself later admitted that he had stopped too soon. At first, he thought the summit of human motivation was self-actualization — becoming your best self, your fullest potential. However, in his unfinished writings, he later suggested that beyond self-actualization lies something greater: self-transcendence. The shift is subtle but important. Self-actualization still centers on me — my growth, my potential, my fulfillment. Self-transcendence shifts the center outward — to others, to truth, to causes larger than the self.

In this sense, Frankl’s prisoners were not “self-actualizing.” They were transcending themselves — giving, enduring, hoping — not for themselves alone but for something beyond them.

Relatedness and the Need to Give

Modern motivation theory deepens this picture. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, in their Self-Determination Theory, showed that human beings have three core psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Relatedness — the sense of meaningful connection to others — is not a luxury that comes later, but a need as basic as autonomy or competence.

This explains why even people in hardship often reach out to others. A poor villager feeding a guest, a disaster survivor comforting a neighbor, or even a child handing over candy — all these acts speak to the deep human need to belong and to matter in each other’s lives. In fact, relatedness often fuels the very strength needed to endure deprivation.

Transcendence at Every Stage

Perhaps, then, we need to rethink Maslow’s model. The hierarchy was useful as a map, but life is not always traveled on straight roads. People do not always climb one step at a time. Sometimes they leap beyond themselves even when their own needs remain unmet.

Seen this way, self-transcendence is not the final stage of human growth. It is an ever-present potential. Children, the poor, the sick, the ordinary, and the extraordinary alike — all can show it. And when they do, they remind us that being human is not just about surviving or even thriving, but about giving, relating, and finding meaning beyond ourselves.

A Gentle Reminder

Maslow’s pyramid still helps us understand the arc of human motives. But perhaps the true story of human life is less a ladder and more a landscape, where self-transcendence can appear anywhere — in a hospital corridor, in a schoolyard, in a moment of generosity across a dinner table.

Frankl was right: even in suffering, we remain free to choose our response. And Deci and Ryan remind us that connection itself is a basic need, not an optional extra. Together, these insights suggest that transcendence is not the top of a pyramid but the thread that runs through it all.

It is the quiet possibility that at any moment, even in lack, even in pain, we may rise above ourselves.

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