Sentilong Ozukum
Have you ever experienced disappointment?
You are smiling back at me. “What? Who in this world has not been visited by this painful torn called disappointment’? Of course I have! Ooops… Wait a minute! I should not have asked you in that way. Let me re-phrase it in this way, “How good are you at handling disappointments? “Do you at times feel choked with depression and frustration? “How do you deal with them?” Have you ever paused and studied why you were left alone tired and despondent? If not, then the pages that follow are for you. Read and study very carefully. Perhaps you might find the answer that you have been seeking for when disappointment knocked at your door last winter.
Do you know that there is a fly in the ointment of disappointment? We put it there. So there is nobody to blame it for. I’m referring to the disease carrying insect of expectations. Stop and think it over. What causes you to experience disappointments? Someone or something has failed to fulfill your expectations.
Right? You had all set up in your mind: the way a certain situation would work out, the way a certain person would respond. But it never materialized. Your wish fell fast hard against some stone cold reality. Your desire dissolved into an empty, unfulfilled dream. After you’ve heard a few stories of disappointment, they begin to sound painfully similar. As I spin some records in my memory, I hear several sad songs from different voices. I had earlier recorded them in my memory while offering my warm gestures to desperate friends who blurted out their heart under the pangs of disappointments and rejections. Listen with me for a moment to their echoes.
• I studied really hard but maybe I was not made for these kind of stuffs. Three times in a row and…… you know… I don’t know have the strength to start all over again.
• I joined this college with high hopes and expectations but I don’t know why I always feel something is missing. I feel dry to the bones. I’m not nearly as prepared as I thought I would be. I feel disappointed.
• She was once a friend of mine. We hanged out together. I reached out, helped her, and loved her. I thought she would at least respond the same way to me…… but things just begun to fall apart. Now we rarely meet…
• He was a really caring, wonderful person. I felt I was more than a friend to him. I really anticipated a deepening romance but it never occurred. I was hurt and disappointed.
• I go to the church every Sunday with high hopes. I want to meet God and experience him. I want to quench my thirst. But every time I’m left disillusioned with the whole thing. I just feel like a blind man looking for a black cat in a dark room.”
• I’m not happy in my work. It’s just s boring. When I got the job, I never realized it would be like this.
• I don’t know what went wrong. Everybody thought I’d be selected. I didn’t perform that bad either. It’s just sad……
• Nobody understands me. Not even my friends. This is not the way I expected things to turn out. I want to show that I can but it’s just that I’m not given a chance……
Expectations
It’s time we take a look at this painful torn that blurs our vision and conceives disappointments in our lives. What we usually do is that we erect mental images of how things should work out which are either unrealistic, unfair or biased. We form images of how somebody should treat us. We erect images of how a particular situation should work out. These phantom images becomes our inner focus, rigidly and traditionally maintained. We eave no room for flexibility or change on the part of the other person. We allow no place for circumstantial change or surprises. We set in mental concrete the way things must go and when they don’t go the our way, we either tumble or stumble……… or both.
So, what’s the remedy?
We should never forget that we are all unique on own way. We all have got different personalities and temperament. We need to give each other stretching space. Maybe it is time we start giving one another room to respond and react in a variety of ways. Of course this will require a ritual burning of our list of expectations. We need to stop anticipating the ideal and start living the real- which is always checkered with failure, imperfection and even wrong. So instead of burning and devouring one another let us support individual freedom as we serve one another in love. Otherwise I don’t know of a better way to kill the flies that spread the disease of expectations.
Let me toss some more questions again for some of you.
Are you spending all your hours pondering over the broken relationship, the broken home and your broken life? Do you know that you are not the only person in this world who experiences disappointments? Our response to failures and disappointments is what bothers me. A great deal of us is like Miss Havisham whom Charles Dickens writes about in his book, “Great Expectations.” Jilted by her fiancée just prior to her wedding, she closed all the blinds, stopped every clock in her home, let the wedding cake on the table gathering cobwebs and continued wearing her weeding dress until it hung in yellow decay around her shrunken form. Her wounded heart consumed her life.
How good are you handling your disappointments? Maybe an illness has left you despondent. Maybe one of your friends has let you down. Are you academically frustrated because of repeated failures? Did anyone tell you before that failures are only temporary tests to prepare us for permanent triumphs? Whoever you are today- please listen to me! Sitting there, licking your wounds will only result in a bitter after state. Sighs and tears and thoughts of quitting are understandable for the moment but inexcusable for the future. Get up and get on with it. And if you’re looking for an absolute guarantee against future failures, I know of only one- Death. You know, ATTITUDE makes a big difference. Listen, you can’t control your circumstances but you can control the way you response to it.
We are the products of our past but we don’t have to be prisoners of it. Many a times our present is the result of our past and what about our future? Yes, you got it right – the result of our present.
