Disappointment comes to all of us. My dictionary says disappointment is a feeling of sadness that occurs when something doesn’t go as I planned. OK. That’s pretty accurate. Nobody relishes disappointment and, seems to me that by the very nature of the word, it is unexpected. Something is planned for, hoped for, worked toward and then, zinging straight through those rose-tinted skies comes a bolt of harsh reality. How do you deal with that?
Psychologists say we have two basic reactions to trauma: fight or flight. Verbal fight or personalized flight. Flight could be getting away from the problem, maybe curling up in a ball and taking a nice, long nap. On a cloudy, chilly fall day, that would be the sensible thing to do. But I have a third option: face the disappointment squarely, get to the root of it, and try to resolve it. Maybe things aren’t as hopeless as they at first seem.
Years ago, a family member told me that I might as well face an unpleasant fact: I can’t make people behave as I want them to. Unless a person accepts that unpleasant fact, she is apt to go through life like an impatient horse, chaffing at the bit. There oughta be a better way. So, here’s my philosophy: do the best I can and when people or things don’t work or do the way I want them to, change them if I can. If I can’t, forget it and move on. So much for that dark, dismal, dastardly fact of life called disappointment!
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