Once upon a time, there was a Little Princess. She would play around the house all day with her toys, and watch movies on the TV, and had lots of fun – all by herself. But sometimes she wished she had a playmate. So one day, in order to have a playmate, she got a little fuzzy black and white kitten. She loved this little kitten and would spend hours a day playing with the kitten.
One day, while she was watching TV, she saw a television show where someone had trained cats to do many tricks. On cat would walk on top of a rolling barrel. One cat would actually walk a tightrope. And one cat would jump through a hoop of fire. But the trick that caught the attention of the Little Princess was one small, tiny cat, perhaps a kitten, who would roll over at the trainer’s command. He would move his hand in a circle, and the kitten would roll over.
The Princess thought this was a neat trick and so she made up her mind that she was going to have her own little kitten roll over at her command. So she picked up the kitten from where it was sleeping on its warm, soft bed, and the Little Princess carried it into the middle of the living room floor. She rolled her hand around in a circle just like the trainer on TV had done but the kitten just looked at her. Then the Little Princess tried telling the kitten to roll over, but the kitten just leaned against the Little Princess’ leg. She tried over and over again to move her hand, and to tell the kitten to roll over. Then the Little Princess ever grabbed hold of the kitten and pushed it down onto its side and then tried to roll the kitten over. But the kitten just stood back up, looked at the Little Princess, and shook itself.
The Little Princess was getting frustrated. It only wanted the kitten to do something simple, but it wouldn’t do it. The more she tried to get the kitten to roll over, the more the kitten just looked at her. She was getting more and more frustrated until she almost could feel her wanting to shove and push the kitten for not doing what she wanted. So the Little Princess decided she had better stop pushing the kitten. So the Little Princess had learned long ago that the best thing she could do when she felt frustrated like this was to make herself a peanut butter sandwich. So she went out to the kitchen, got the bread out, spread on piece with the peanut butter. Then, realizing that no one was watching her, she put a generous amount of jelly of the other slice of bread. Then she picked up to sandwich and enjoyed her peanut butter sandwich so much.
She was feeling better until she came back into the living room where the kitten had curled into a big furry ball. The Little Princess and petted the kitten and started feeling frustrated that the kitten hadn’t learned to roll over. Just then, the little kitten rolled over. The eyes of the Little Princess got very wide. Then the little kitten rolled over again. Then the kitten looked into the eyes of the Little Princess.
Then the Little Princess realized what the kitten was trying to tell her. The kitten was teaching her that she should never “expect” certain behavior. We are only frustrated when we have expectations which are not met. If we never had expectations, we would never be frustrated and we wouldn’t have to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It’s okay to have hopes because if our hopes don’t work out, we can deal with that. But when we expect others to meet up with our expectations, we are only making ourselves vulnerable to feeling frustrated. The Little Princess kept repeating to herself, “No expectations – no frustrations” over and over again. The Little Princess promised herself that she would put this maxim to use with her Daddy the next time she was frustrated with him.
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