On Disappointment
He is a tricky one.
We dream. We envision. We picture the trip, the job, the dinner, the life. We can see it so clearly that it starts to feel like a promise. And then it comes, or it doesn’t, and there is heartache.
I just got back from the Dolomites with my girls. Some things went as planned. Many did not. We missed the Alpe di Siusi hike. And of course, on a different trail, we met a mother-daughter duo who said that was the one we shouldn’t miss. And then I longed for it even more. The dinner at our hotel that we thought was included in our reservation was not. It was expensive and not great. Yeah. That was disappointing.
Disappointment can be a confusing. Because our dreams and visions aren’t bad. They can be wonderful and motivating. But if we hold too tight, disappointment is sure to follow.
Mo Gawdat, whose work I love, puts it in an equation: happiness equals our perception of events minus our expectations. Our suffering lives in the gap between what happened and what we thought was supposed to happen. If I expect dinner is included and it’s not, and they charge me a fortune for something mediocre, well. There you go.
The equation helped me see something. My expectations and my perception are the only variables I control. Not the events. Not the hike we missed. Not the dinner. Just how tightly I held my picture of how it was all supposed to go.
I want to keep dreaming. I want my daughters to keep imagining a world of possibilities. And I’m learning to recover from disappointment faster. To feel it, sit with it, and then let the equation do its quiet work. Both things can exist. The dream and the reality. I’d just rather spend more time in happiness’ lap.