On Disappointments

We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.

Anais Nin

 

The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you're really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

Richard M. Nixon

 

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Death affords those who are left an opportunity to reevaluate everything. And though we would give all we have to defer that opportunity, it exists anyway. It allows us to see the flimsiness of our expectations, to realize there is not expectation without disappointment; it allows us the possibility to being more sensitive, more vulnerable, to let others support us, and to notice the integrity and love often left unobserved in life's fast pace. Mainly, it gives us the chance to live life in the present.

-Joan Bordow

 

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.

-Thomas Hardy

 

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

-Samuel Johnson

 

Where faith is there is courage, there is fortitude, there is steadfastness and strength... Faith bestows that sublime courage that rises superior to the troubles and disappointments of life, that acknowledges no defeat except as a step to victory; that is strong to endure, patient to wait, and energetic to struggle... Light up, then, the lamp of faith in your heart... It will lead you safely through the mists of doubt and the black darkness of despair; along the narrow, thorny ways of sickness and sorrow, and over the treacherous places of temptation and uncertainty.

-James Allen

Disappointment is life's way of wiping the unrealistic expectations from our eyes and forcing us to remember some vital facts about life: First, that it does not revolve around us or our self-centered wants and desires. Second, that as much as we would like to, we cannot control everything or anyone. Third, that if we choose to waste and take for granted what we have and quarrel with each-other over what we don't, no amount of possession can serve to make us happy. Disappointment brings to the surface those facts that often get buried in the wake of our impulsive and reckless drive for self-satisfaction. 

            Disappointment can become a tool for change, a change in behavior as well as in thought. Too little and a man will grow proud, too much and he will be dry of passion. Men become great when they use discontent to their advantage, channeling disappointment’s dreary and weighty rains to drive forward the mill wheels of progression.

~M.R.