Understanding Disappointment

We've all been there. Something we expected, wanted, or hoped for didn't happen -- or happened in a less-than-satisfying way. Maybe the person you expected to love you always didn't. Or maybe the promotion you had hoped for went to someone else. Or maybe the situation you really wanted to work out just didn't.

As far as disappointments go, 2020 had more than its fair share. High school and college graduates didn't get to walk the stage, brides and grooms gave their vows before an audience of laptop screens, and jobs and income just disappeared.

While some disappointments hit harder than others, they all have the same root: expectation. The monks would call it attachment. By putting yourself, your hopes, your expectation to a particular outcome, you are creating an attachment; an attachment to a person, a job, a particular situation.

In 2020 I learned a powerful lesson. I am not a god or a prophet and I cannot see or control the future.

Shocking, right?

Early 2020 found me, and so many others, mourning the loss of a future that was never going to happen. The future where Covid-19 never happened and we all lived our lives happily ever after. No matter how much we expected the future to be different, or argued that this wasn't 'supposed' to happen, it happened. That future we had expected -- where everyone was safe and still had their jobs, lives weren't lost, children were still in school, and people still wore pants -- that was never going to be 2020.

The future that you are stepping into this very minute, as you are reading this sentence, is exactly the future that was always going to occur. And tomorrow will be what it was always going to be, and next year will be what it was always meant to be.

Here's the hard part. There's nothing you or I can do to control it or foresee it. Ouch.

This is where some people would call it all hopeless. I'm not saying there's nothing you can do now. You control the reality of your present, and that shapes the reality of your future. But too many of us are trapped in disappointment over things that are (and always were) completely out of our control.

If 2020 has taught me anything, it's that disappointment is a 100% man-made state of being. Because we are the ones who create our own disappointment, it is thoroughly unnecessary and completely avoidable.

All we have to do is cut it down at the root, removing our expectation, or attachment. The future is what it is, and as the saying goes "what will be will be." I found immense peace during 2020 by releasing my expectation, and leaning into this mantra.

I'm not perfect, things still catch me off guard, or don't turn out exactly as I'd hoped. But I am no longer forced to walk through that suffocating state of disappointment or regret. Recognizing that this future was always what was going to happen gives me the freedom to be okay with whatever comes.

After all, the only reason I'd be disappointed is if I had expected differently.