Disappointment Is a Part of Life #$*#(*&&^@S$!
I don’t know about you, but I am do not handle disappointment well. I’m not talking about a normal what-a-bummer reaction. I get downright depressed, and depending on the circumstances, can get pretty enraged when someone doesn’t follow through on their promises. I continually try to find better ways to set expectations, because that rollercoaster ride I go on when I put my faith in other people is probably not a good ride to spend my money on.
A friend of mine has told me on more than one occasion that I put too much faith in people – I sort of thought of that as a nice characteristic – I assume people will do the right thing rather than cynically assume they will do just the opposite of what is expected. But over time I’ve seen her foretell quite a few disappointments – events that probably wouldn’t have been quite so upsetting if I hadn’t been so rosy about it in the first place. Her point has always been that I tend to put some people on a pedestal when I first meet them – that person is amazing, wonderful, so smart, so talented…etc – so that when they turn out to also be the type who does dumb things, I feel like an idiot. I’m not sure what the solution is: I don’t want to start assuming everyone is going to do dumb things and then be pleasantly surprised if they don’t.
The quandary is this: How can you make decisions in life – take a new job, start dating a new person, or anything like that - if you assume the new people are going to be just like the old people? You would never change anything if you assumed that change would result in future disappointment as you slowly recognized you just switched out the faces. Then there’s the question of repeating mistakes – am I drawn to the same types of personalities and places? Am I just reaping the same result because I’m making the same bad judgments? I guess that is part of life – learning what your patterns are and trying to break them. I can’t seem to shake this practice of giving people a lot of benefit of the doubt – but I also can’t seem to stop walking into repeat performances.
I certainly understand that disappointment is a part of life – and I truly believe that how you handle disappointment says a lot about your character (are you a: oh well, let’s try something else and move on kind of person, or are you a: bad things always happen to me what’s the point kind of person?), but I also believe that I set myself up for it by focusing too much of my energy on what other people do. If I didn’t expect so much, I wouldn’t have to feel bamboozled.
