Disappointment happens when what we want to happen does not happen. Life is full of disappointments. I've been disappointed in myself, in others, and in life. On the surface, it seems like a gentle emotion, and sometimes it is. If I want to have lunch with a friends, and he's not available, I would feel this gentle disappointment. Sometimes however disappointment is a river both wide and deep. I believe grief is really a profound experience of disappointment. A relationship ended. Someone died. The end of a job or big financial difficulties. Disappointment may be the most common emotion that we experience if we include it in all it's forms and intensity levels.
On June 26, 2006, I was working in my garage ripping a piece of hardwood on a table saw to make a door. I was in a hurry and being careless, and I caught my hand on the blade. A split second later my left index finger was hanging by a piece of skin. Suddenly I got hyper competent and drove myself to the emergency room, which was thankfully close by. They couldn't save the finger. I was of course devastated. It was totally my own carelessness that caused this, and I played the scene back endlessly in my mind. I was deeply disappointed in myself for this tragic carelessness. It was very difficult to forgive myself. My disappointment was so deep that it took me a full year to process though it.
Seeing how common disappointment is has got me wondering about how we respond to this emotion. Life is guaranteed to disappoint us many times, so finding an adaptive way to respond to disappointment is critical to life a happy life.
For someone who is immature or narcissistic, even a small disappointment may throw them into a tantrum. Really this is their attempt to bludgeon life (or others) to comply to their wishes. It's easy to see that a strategy like this will not lead to a happy life; most people will avoid being around someone like this.
Disappointment is not a pleasant emotion, and the more intense forms are quite painful. Another strategy I have seen is to become cynical. I have had a lot of disappointments in my life, and there was a period where this made me cynical. Eventually I realized that cynicism is just a way of shitting on anything I might hope for, and without hope present, I can't become disappointed. I was essentially pre-disappointing myself. I see this as scar tissue forming over the wounds of previous disappointments. It masquerades as worldliness and sophistication, but it is really an immature response and can't lead to a fulfilling life.
Another thing that I have done at times is to curse the disappointing development. Maybe I lost some money, or I placed trust in someone who was not worthy of that trust. By cursing the event, I turn away from it and make it profane. The blame is all external to myself and there is no opportunity to learn from the experience.
So if life is bound to disappoint us many times, what is the best way to meet these disappointments? The stoics have something interesting to say here:
“Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.” – Epictetus, Enchiridion Ch. 8
It may be natural to feel disappointment, but when feeling disappointment, we may miss the gifts that come within what is actually happening. It can be an opportunity to learn something new, to see another side to ourselves or another, or perhaps generate new insight into how the world actually works. We can focus on the distortions of our original “appointment”: the way we projected our expectations onto life, and see the disillusionment as a good thing. After all, isn't ridding ourselves of illusions a good thing?
My approach now is to turn toward what has happened and ask myself how this experience can lead me to grow and become a better person
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