Lifelore

The Merriam-Webster definition of disappointment is: defeated in expectation or hope. Being disappointed begins in early childhood and is based around simple expectations. For example, when I was a little girl, I remember being disappointed when my parents would drive by Dairy Queen without stopping, or not being able to buy the latest and greatest toy that all of my friends seemed to have. As we get older, the feeling of disappointment occurs over more major events that have more of a lasting impact.

It seems that as early as preschool, the feelings of disappointment start to run deep and last longer. I can remember being “friends” with a certain girl who would act as a friend one day and seem to not even remember my name the next. From day to day, I never knew how she would treat me. I was disappointed that she was not the friend that I had expected.   

Disappointment is always based on our expectations. When we expect something to happen we expect that it will, indeed, happen. When it doesn’t pan out that way, we are disappointed. It is just a normal part of life. There are times when we must examine whether our expectations are off-base or unrealistic.

If I expected my husband to come home from work every single evening, and only do the things that I wanted him to do, that would be unrealistic. I would not be taking his desires or his happiness into account. I would need to reassess my expectations, otherwise, I would be extremely disappointed (not to mention, selfish). The same would need to happen if my kids expected me to drive them around town wanting me to buy them anything they wanted. They would need to re-examine their expectations or they would be constantly disappointed.

Sometimes, though, our expectations are not unrealistic and we need to decide how many times we will allow ourselves to be disappointed. If we have a friend that constantly promises one thing and does the opposite or never follows through, we need to decide if that friendship is worth being disappointed over, time and time again. Another example would be a boss that constantly dangles a carrot over your head promising a pay raise, but you never actually see that pay raise. The decision must be made to continue to have the carrot dangle, discuss it with your boss, or move on elsewhere.

Disappointment is normal in life. People are people and we always mess up. Sometimes we disappoint others unknowingly simply because we do not know what their expectations are. It is when it happens over and over again, with the same person or people though, that disappointment leads to discouragement and unhappiness. We need to ask ourselves if the disappointment is worth the heartache that follows. Our goal in life is to be the best person that we can be and when someone constantly tears us down, it is time to move on otherwise we can not be at our best.

We should always be learning from our “disappointment lessons”. We need to take the things that we are disappointed over and make sure that we do not disappoint others in the same way that we were disappointed. Life is a constant lesson of learning and growing. If we do not take the things that have hurt us and turn them into lessons for the future, we really haven’t learned anything in the end.

Written by Kathryn Conrad