The Spoils of Not Getting What You Wanted

Disappointment is a funny word. It’s almost as if it’s describing what happens when you make an appointment with what you want and then it fails to show up. Maybe it got stuck in traffic. Maybe it had an accident on its way to you. But usually you feel fairly certain that you’ve been stood up. One of things I try not to do is paint pictures in my head of what I think I want. At least not the perfect version of what I want. I discovered that when I do that I become very disappointed when it fails to materialize in my life. Sometimes I would become so fixated on what I had painstakingly described to myself that I missed something even better that showed up unannounced.

It can happen to us with the simplest of things. “Oh crap our favorite Italian/Sushi/Indian/or-whatever restaurant is closed tonight. Damn, I didn’t know they were closed on Tuesdays.” You feel beyond disappointed. You don’t go out that often. You had your heart set on this favorite restaurant of yours. Maybe you got a sitter. Or shaved your legs. Or gave up game night with cool friends. Then someone suggests a new place to try. You reluctantly go. Everyone else is blown away by how good it is. And it is good. But, it is not, your place. It is not what you had counted on it being. You could have reacted with a case of temporary disappointment but you let yourself catch a flu-level case that would last the entire evening and maybe into tomorrow.

My son once asked me if he had ever disappointed me. He, a middle-schooler at the time, was at the bottom of a staircase in our home. I was at the top. “Oh yeah,” I said with zero hesitation, “of course you have.” His face fell. But then I said, “People disappoint each other all the time. But here’s the thing, you never ever have been nor could I ever imagine you being ‘a disappointment’ to me.” His face lit up. He got it.

Being disappointed is like having a splinter. Sure it’s irritating but it can be removed and you heal quickly. Being a disappointment is a whole other situation. It’s bigger. It’s about crossing serious well-marked boundaries, and a distinct lack of character. I try not to confuse the two. Most of the people I care about would have to work really hard to become a disappointment to me. They all, each in their own ways, excel at disappointing me from time to time. As I do them. Their disappointing behaviors are often caused by a little unintentional emotional off-gassing. And let’s be real, a fart is rarely a good enough reason to give up on someone.

Cinse Bonino
2023