By Diana Bletter

Don’t you love knock-knock jokes? Here’s one:

“Knock, knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Banana.”
“Banana who?”
“Knock, knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Banana.”
“Banana who?”
“Knock, knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Orange.”
“Orange who?”
“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”

Kids love that joke. It can also teach us something about ourselves, too. How often do we hear the knock on the door and expect people to be different than they usually are?

I was talking to one of my daughters, Amalia, about her friend — I’ll call him Chuck — who is always late. Amalia says that she makes plans with Chuck for 7 o’clock and he shows up at 8. He says he’s sorry and then he can’t understand why my daughter gets so upset. She said that she has tried to explain to him that he’s not being considerate. She said that she would never do that to him. He apologizes. He says he’ll never do it again and yet–

It’s 7 o’clock and do you know where Chuck is?

We want people we love to change. We want them to act more responsibly or be more considerate or less critical. And yet, we can’t change the people we love. We can only change ourselves.

It is said that expectations are premeditated resentments. We can avoid resentments (which poison our souls) by having no expectations of others.

All my daughter can do is take care of herself. She can remind herself that she has other options! Wow. She can make a plan with Chuck, let’s say, for 7 o’clock and if he doesn’t show up by 7:15, she can leave and do something else. She can have a Plan A — Chuck – and a Plan B — Bill, Annie or Louise. If she has a back-up plan, then she won’t be so disappointed if Chuck doesn’t show up.

We can take care of ourselves by not expecting an orange to be a banana. Then we are not as antsy and as angry. We let people be themselves and we set ourselves free.

What premeditated resentments do you need to ban from your life?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diana Bletter is the First Prize winner of Family Circle Magazine’s 2011 Fiction Contest, and her novel, The Witches’ Secret, was a semi-finalist in Amazon’s 2009 Breakout Novel Award. Her writing appears in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post. She is the author of The Mom Who Took Off On Her Motorcycle. Diana currently lives in Israel.