How We Set Ourselves up for Disappointment. The Entanglement of Pride, Desperation and Misplaced Desire Can Complicate!

Expectations make the world go around. And "disappointments" are the precipitation of dashed expectations. Go from the universal and the impersonal down to the intensely specific. The question about "major disappointments" has much to do with the personal, but let's start with the general for the sake of the broad understanding of our topic.

Have you ever heard a person really complain about the weather or their local climate. I refer now not to attempts to come up with random human conversation, but with people who are truly angry at the rain, or the sun, or the humidity. If you get a peculiarly ardent and angry person, you can hear the essence of the human fire called "disappointment". That is "I wanted this, and I did not get it".

Getting Over England

Then the question becomes "Why was this so important to you?" and "Why were you so positive about your expectation." I remember hoping to get transferred to a School in England. I won't explain the politics, but I was convinced that this move would be a life changing event, and improve me and actually determine how much money I could make in the future. I prayed. I focused. I concentrated. I thought I could think this event into existence.

Have you ever watched a large, long-limbed Flamingo try to gain altitude? So Nature blesses them with flight, of course, but if you look at the first two movements of the bird, your human observation experiences a momentary awe.

Well, it did not happen. In fact, I was so beside myself with hope and expectation that when it did not happen, it was a "Major Disappointment". My head filled with despair. After I licked my wounds and went over my anguish, I learned that the way the situation was explained to me was far from what the reality would present. I remember this event because it was so lofty and dramatic. I remember it because it felt like a deep loss. I remember this because I was having a hard time conceiving of life without it.

SETTING YOURSELF UP

Disappointments come because we "set ourselves up". The anguish, the emptiness, the "I was counting on this!" all have to do with psychological machinations that plant themselves in your little garden of hope and take over. Getting over disappointment is not as much as "talking yourself out of how you felt" -- much more it involves talking yourself INTO your current reality.

Opinion on the disappointment. England, I learned later, was an assignment for Americans to go through. There was abuse, intolerant treatment and other strange rites of passage that I can not share. I learned this later. Not going to England was a blessing placed upon me by a kind and compassionate executive who was reading down like a puppet master, and relieving me of much long term suffering that truly could have damaged me long term.

Thus, once I learned that I said to myself: Who am I to know that I should be disappointed? I thought a long time about that.

Digging Holes in the Dust and Rock at "the Dig" in Jerusalem

To many this sounds like "Rah Rah" time after the 1967 War. (Summer of 1968) Anticipation can get way way out of control. You picture drinking, partying, staying out late at night and going nuts in the Sun.

Without over explaining. Those who ended up going got up to the barking of a Brit who thought we were building the "Bridge on the River Kwai". 10 hour days, sun blisters and digging up junk was what happened. Everybody covered themselves with sun lotions and cursed the idea of "making history".

I didn't go. Politics among the hierarchy cut me out. What a blessing. But still, that summer, I felt dismayed and disrespected until I got the reviews from the RED student bodies in September.

"Entanglement" Confounds Us Much More Than We Know

Sometimes wrinkles seem to portray the "weathering" of life. But much of the weather --- the storms, the lightning, sudden heat or cold, come from the entanglements that "strangle us". The tugging and pulling of the conflicts of hope and desire can cripple us inside. Assessing victory and defeat is a game of long term judgment.

Keep that in mind. And remember many "supposed victories" cannot be judged until farther down the road. The same is true for Defeats.