The Gita on Expectations: If Life Owes Us Nothing, Why Are We Still Heartbroken? (The Mind’s Biggest Illusion!)

The Myth of Life’s Promises
We grow up believing in the fairness of life. That love will be returned, that hard work will pay off, that kindness will be rewarded. It’s a silent contract we sign with the universe, written in the ink of expectations. But when life doesn’t hold up its end of the deal, heartbreak rushes in—unexpected, unbearable.

Was life unfair? Or were we simply mistaken about how it works?

The Bhagavad Gita, an ancient scripture yet eternally relevant, dismantles our illusions with unsettling clarity: You are entitled to your actions, but never to their fruits. It teaches us that expectations are the root of suffering, and only in surrender do we find true freedom. Yet, surrender feels impossible. How do we let go when we have spent our lives holding on?
Krishna says, “Karmanye vadhikaraste, ma phaleshu kadachana”—do your duty, but do not cling to results.

Yet, we live as if happiness is a checklist: a perfect relationship, a dream career, a flawless life. We expect certain outcomes because we assume we deserve them. But life is not transactional. It owes us nothing, yet it gives us everything—every moment, every breath, every sunrise. The sooner we realize this, the lighter we become.

Expectation is an illusion created by the mind, a false sense of control over the unpredictable. When we release that control, we don’t lose our dreams—we just stop tying our happiness to them.
Detachment often sounds cold. But Krishna never asks us to stop feeling—only to stop clinging.

Imagine holding a butterfly too tightly; in fear of losing it, you crush it. Love, success, even happiness, work the same way. We try to possess them, control them, but in doing so, we lose their essence. True detachment is not about rejecting emotions—it’s about embracing them without being ruled by them.

Life flows. People leave. Plans fail. And yet, the sun rises again, indifferent to our heartbreak. The lesson? The more we flow with life, the less we suffer.
Krishna reminds Arjuna that nothing is permanent—not joy, not sorrow.

“मात्रास्पर्शास्तु कौन्तेय शीतोष्णसुखदुःखदाः।
आगमापायिनोऽनित्यास्तांस्तितिक्षस्व भारत।।”
(Heat and cold, pleasure and pain, come and go; they are impermanent. Endure them patiently.)

We are heartbroken not because life is cruel, but because we expected it to be kind. The truth is, no one is exempt from suffering—not kings, not saints, not even gods. The difference is in how we respond. Do we resist pain and let it break us, or do we accept it and let it shape us?

Suffering comes from the stories we tell ourselves about pain—this shouldn't have happened, this isn't fair. But what if we changed the story? What if every heartbreak was a teacher, every setback a redirection, every loss a cleansing of what no longer serves us?

Krishna’s love stories were never about possession, but devotion. The Gopis, Radha—they loved him knowing he belonged to the universe. Their love wasn’t about demands or guarantees; it was about surrender. Yet, in modern relationships, we confuse attachment with love. We expect people to fulfill us, to never change, to always choose us. But love is not about possession—it is about presence.

When we love freely, without expectations, love stops being a transaction and becomes a gift. And gifts, unlike contracts, don’t break hearts when they are not returned.
“अशाश्वतं इदं जगत्”—this world is transient.

We cling to moments as if they will last forever. We expect people to stay, happiness to be constant, success to be permanent. But everything in life is in motion. The river never holds onto a drop of water, yet it never runs dry.

The more we resist change, the more we suffer. The more we embrace it, the more we flow with life. Instead of mourning what was, what if we celebrated what is?
Surrender does not mean giving up; it means giving in—to the wisdom of life, to the understanding that we are not the directors of this play, only the actors.

The sun doesn’t negotiate its rise. The seasons don’t ask for permission to change. Why, then, do we believe we can dictate life’s course?

To surrender is not to stop caring, but to stop controlling. It is trusting that whatever comes is meant for us, and whatever leaves was never ours to begin with.
The greatest illusion of the mind is that life should be fair. But fairness is a human construct—life is neither cruel nor kind; it simply is.

The Gita does not promise us a life without pain, but it offers something better: a way to live without suffering. If we can love without attachment, act without entitlement, and accept without resistance, we will find the kind of peace that no heartbreak, no failure, no loss can ever take away.

We were never owed love, success, or happiness. But in releasing that belief, we find something far greater—peace, resilience, and a joy that does not depend on anything or anyone.

And maybe, just maybe, that is the truest form of freedom.