You can open your heart to yourself for having such a high expectation that normally you wouldn't even put on yourself - to be perfect. Have any of you met someone who's perfect? I haven't. It's said that the Buddha was perfect. But we're a little late. According to the scriptures, there were a lot of enlightened people, what they called Arahants, fully-enlightened people, who were basically perfect in the sense that they discovered the Truth and became enlightened; but even that doesn't mean that they were perfect.
To be enlightened does not mean that you have perfect mindfulness all of the time. By definition only the Buddha had perfect mindfulness every moment of the day. Other enlightened people may not have had perfect mindfulness all day long but they would never do anything that was intentionally harmful, or with a defilement in the mind. Anger, fear and all that, they won't have them; but they might make mistakes. They might say to you that they will meet you in the dining hall at 12 o'clock, and at 12 o'clock they don't show up because they have forgotten. They may miss that mindfulness, and they might forget and you may think, "Oh, they can't be enlightened because they can't even be here on time", but that's not actually the definition of enlightenment. When you go to find them and they are at their hut and you say, "We're worried, we were supposed to meet at 12 o'clock," and they go, "Oh I'm sorry, I forgot." That is not what you may call perfect. But actually enlightened people can do that by definition, they can forget, but they won't do it in a harmful way. So this word perfect, if your looking for the perfect human you're two-and-a-half-thousands years late.
Now, the expectation - desire. What's the Second Noble Truth? Your desires, your cravings, your expectations are the cause of your Dukkha. The more you want something that you can't have, the more you're going to suffer. If you want to find a perfect human being on this planet, good luck, let me know if you ever find one. But it's probably not going to happen, so can we actually accept that everybody is not perfect, can we start from there? Interesting. If we start from the point of view that everyone is not perfect, then if we find people who don't make many mistakes, we can be happy. If we start with the point of view that everyone should be perfect, then when we see someone making a mistake, even if it's little one, then we start getting sad. But if we consider that everybody is not perfect and start from there, we're going to be a happier person.
What do we say about Dukkha, "Expect Dukkha." Expect it. Don't expect happiness. Happiness is not your right. You were not guaranteed happiness when you were born. If you were, show me the document. Show me a piece of paper that would stand up in court that you can show to the judge that says, "I was supposed to get happiness." No, you're guaranteed Dukkha.
That's not to say that we don't have moments of satisfaction, moments of happiness. It's just a fact that when you're born a human being, you're born into a realm that automatically gives you Dukkha – automatically - you're not a perfect person just by being born human. When the Buddha was born, he was not perfect. Every human being, at birth, is not perfect. So to accept that, to actually understand that that's true to reality, then we're going to be much happier in our lives.
So try to lower your expectations about other people, have more compassion, and, in fact, try expecting everyone to be really dumb, expect them to make mistakes often, not just every once in a while, but often. Expect people to say black is black, when actually they meant red is red, but they didn't realize they meant red instead of black. Expect people to make mistakes and then you can be more forgiving because this is the human realm. You can be more forgiving because people will make mistakes, and the more you open your heart for them, the less you suffer.
How many of you would get super angry at a little two year old who wants a candy before dinner. "Mommy, Daddy, I want a candy. Uncle Todd, Uncle Andrew, I want a candy. Helge, I want a candy." Now, would you get super angry at the little two year old? Probably not. But can you open your heart and realize they're only two. You know they're just two years old, they're greedy, and they suffer like other two year olds. And a lot of adults, whether they are twenty years old, forty years old, sixty years old, eighty years old, a lot of them are just like that two year old.
Can we open our heart for everybody and not expect so much in return.