Thrive!

Disappointment, it’s an ointment — or it’s not.

I know. I’ve been disappointed once — well more than once.

I think other people have too, a few of them.

I saw a girl the other day who had on too much makeup. I happened to know she’s disappointed, and interestingly it was the makeup made me think of that. Her husband cheated on her a few years back, they divorced, she’s still looking for loyal love. She’s trying hard.

To not get what we want is one thing, to not get what we need another. It messes with us.  There are varying shades of this.

I had a friend who wanted to follow as successful military career with a career teaching history. I was excited for him. But shockingly he died of cancer in his late thirties even before he could start school.

I was unnerved by this. When I think of it it still flummoxes me; this dangerous force majeure, this ghastly, meaningless jape, this lovely dream gone lost —  for him, his beautiful young wife, his small children. Wow!

I think of parents who have lost a child. The unthinkable. They will never fully recover, always remember, always grieve, never be the same again.

Life fails us. In many ways. We don’t earn as much money as we thought we would. Our career isn’t as successful as we wanted it to be. Our signifiant other is not as supportive as we want her or him to be. Our children have difficulty getting established. The dinner we order at the restaurant is too salty. Our retirement accounts underperform. Our business burns down.

Living with reality, living with realities that aren’t what we wish — unfortunately that is normal, common, prevalent.

But here is the deal, or one of the deals. Disappointment can shape us, make us, not break us. Not everything goes well, that doesn’t mean we aren’t somewhat okay, aren’t moving ahead, aren’t blessed in some other way, haven’t had some of the successes we have indeed had.

Two thoughts.

Disappointed?

Then sit with your feelings, hold your disappointment like you would a child, don’t deny that it hurts. It won’t kill you to just experience it, to feel it. It may do you good. If you feel it, you know what the rest of the human race feels, and you know what reality feels like.

Saying things like, “I don’t care,” or “It doesn’t matter,” aren’t very healthy or helpful. You do care or you wouldn’t be disappointed — and caring is a good thing. And really, what you wanted that didn’t happen may have mattered, a lot! Don’t shame yourself for feeling disappointed.

One of my therapist friends told me recently, “You get disappointed because you care so much, you hope for so much, you are such a visionary. It’s true. Great dreamers have great disappointments, but they also live with so much hope, so much expectancy, so much positivity, so much vision that does come true.

Secondly, to live effectively with disappointment — especially seeing that the researchers tells us we are wired for negativity — we may have to work at not letting the blues become our only reality.

When one thing is hard then it is good to notice that very often something else in our lives is easy. Right now my body is suffering various and sundry chronic pains. But my work — it’s going quite well.

And when we have loss, often we experience — even in the same time frame — some gains. In fact every loss may contain a hidden gain. The loss of one stage of life ushers in another, the loss of one thing leads to the next thing for us that wouldn’t have been possible without the loss of the first thing.

A painful family death may be followed by the making a good new friend. The loss of a great job may be followed by a job that is even better, or has a needed difference in it. What is dashed — it may even lead to the cash, of some variety. The loss of a career, or of our health, or of a loved one maybe be followed by the deepening of our souls.

Disappointment — it’s life, and it is an decidedly acceptable emotion. It’s okay to feel it, and to let it go, and also to keep moving toward a different, newly acceptable future.

I know.

You do too.