“And we passed by, silent, coward, ignored,
Our word wasn’t meant to be heard
As a withered leaf fell glowing in the sleeping
sea of the unfulfilled that so much of mine holds in”.
Papantoniou Zacharias, The Woman In The Park
Both ancient Greek (προσδοκώ) and Latin word (expectation) for expectation have the same meaning; to hope; to await; to wish for. And, this is how expectations work for you and for others. You wait for yourself to be something, you hope that the others will behave somehow or give you something, you wish in your life to become or to find something significant.
And until here everything seems normal and acceptable. Dreams, fantasy and hope are the bases of progress and evolution. Expectations, realistic or unrealistic, is a game we play with our minds for the better. The matter is how we handle fruitful and unreal; we bitterly sink in the waters of the unfulfilled or we choose to row in a different, possible sea.