What are lessons you can find in Great Expectations and apply to our lives today?

Pip has
many expectations, but I think the main expectation in Dickens' novel, and the one to which the
title refers, is that Miss Havisham is going to do something wonderful for him. When he learns
about his great expectations from Mr. Jagger, Pip naturally assumes that it is Miss Havisham who
is his benefactor. He guesses that she wants to turn him into a gentleman, then have him marry
Estella, and finally leave him all her money, so that he can enjoy a life of ease and luxury
with a beautiful wife. In the process of becoming a "gentleman" he experiences some
disillusionments, but there are incidental to the main expectation that he is going to be
married to Estella and inherit a fortune. Neither Miss Havisham nor her lawyer Mr. Jagger say
anything to discourage him. Jaggers has to keep silent for professional reasons. Miss Havisham's
motives are harder to understand. She knows what Pip expects of her and doesn't tell him the
truth. But he is in for a terrible shock when Magwitch, his real benefactor, shows up on a cold,
rainy night. Dickens must have planned that scene from the time he began writing the novel.
Pip's whole life and perspective are changed by the fact that his social status was dependent on
one person rather than another.