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Chapter 5 77 They can vary on a continuum from low to (too) high, from weakly held to strongly held, and from general to very specific (e.g. be successful as a lawyer). 45 Also, an important distinction is to be made between descriptive and normative expectations. Consider the following example. In an interview for their university magazine, two children of immigrants tell that their parents saw their migration as a means to give their children a chance of a better life. 46 Their parents chose to give up their familiar life for the benefit of their children in this new country. As a consequence, the immigrant children felt they were expected to be successful, particularly in the narrow sense of getting a good (high) education and a good job. In this example the parents’ expectation would be descriptive if it were simply based upon the idea that now that their children live in Europe, they are bound to be headed for a successful life, like all European children who are as smart as theirs. The expectation would be normative if the parents believed that their children ought to be successful. A normative expectation is not ‘just’ an observation or the conclusion of reasoning, it is an assignment or prescription or even an order, disguised or explicit. Parental expectations can be both (at the same time), and it can, in practice, be hard to distinguish the one from the other. Also, parents can have such strong descriptive expectations that they exert pressure upon the child, in which case the expectations, from the child’s perspective, are prescriptive (and thus de facto normative). Openness to the unforeseen Charles Larmore argues that having a rational ‘plan’ in life, is wrong; because a significant dimension of the human good escapes us if we believe that our attitude towards life must be at bottom one of foresight and control, as the idea of a life plan entails. On the contrary, we live well when we are not simply active, but passive too. (..) For the unexpected can turn out to be, not just the mishap that defeats our plans, but also the revelation that discloses new vistas of meaning, new forms of happiness and understanding which we least suspected or never imagined and which may change our lives and who we are in the deepest ways. 47 Larmore appears to be arguing for an attitude which is not only concerned with planning and anticipating, but which also values simply awaiting what is going to happen. This is similar to what 45 See De Ruyter and Schinkel 2013. 46 See https://issuu.com/advalvas/docs/nr_13_22_februari_2017/16. 47 Larmore 1999, p. 98.