Disappointment

Why Enough Isn’t Really Enough for Most

Sad Black man
Photo Credit: Center for Hope WNY

Although it may seem cynical, I view most people as folks constantly assessing how they can benefit from others. As I have grown older, this view has become more pronounced. The moment most resolve they cannot benefit from you or benefit any longer from you, the moment they disregard you, or devalue what you have done and/or are doing for them. One such ungrateful person told me my contribution was not enough. Keep in mind, I didn’t/don’t owe any contribution to this person; my giving was an act of kindness. To have my contribution devalued, therefore, in a sophomoric assessment of it, angered me. Such an assessment buttresses my position that most don’t think what you do for them is enough.

Recently, I gave a detailed account to an individual about what I did to address her immediate needs. Guess what? Without any semblance of gratitude and acknowledgment, she proceeded to list many other things she needs me to do—never acknowledging what I have already done. Really? Are you kidding me? This selfishness is hurtful—no matter how tough one is. I don’t want to become a cold and isolated person unwilling to do anything for others, but it’s too many instances like this that suggest I may need to adopt a form of this “cold and isolated person.”

Critical Self-Reflection Exercise

Take a moment right now and engage in critical self-reflection. Do you primarily associate with most people to gain some benefit from them? For those you benefit from, do you often think about ways to show them how much you appreciate them? Recognize that a “thank you” is vacuous and insufficient at some point.

Learning from “Write-to-Learn” Exercise

As a writing scholar and instructor, I study the concept and practice of “write-to-learn.” “Write-to-learn” centers on how it is often necessary for us to engage in the critical thinking writing affords us to comprehend what we really think about an issue. I like to assign write-to-learn exercises to my students. If I contend these exercises are useful for my student writers, then I must use these exercises, too.

From the critical thinking this exercise supplied, I determined I will give to and invest in a select few who show their genuine gratitude for the serious contributions I have made to their lives. To be frank, it’s just a few people out of the many folks I have given to and invested in substantially. That’s sad, but it’s the unvarnished, unadulterated truth.

I realize I shouldn’t stop contributing to others; I must limit my contributions to those few who demonstrate they truly value what I do for them.

Also, I notice that once some people receive such significant help from me and they no longer need my help, I never hear from them—unless I initiate contact. By no means do I feel they should contact me each day; however, I believe they should contact me periodically—even if it’s nothing but to see how I am doing and to let me know how they are doing. A quick text message, phone call, private/direct message on social media platforms, and/or etc.

Ultimately, you must do what makes you happy and what gives you joy. That’s what I’ve decided to do from this point on: do what makes me happy and what gives me joy.

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison        

Don’t Let Disappointment Defeat You

Overcoming Disappointment
Photo Credit: Everyday Feminism

Disappointment is a natural part of the human experience; take time to learn from it—never hide from what it invites you to confront. One grows stronger when he or she learns to discover what disappointment offers, but fear causes people to attempt to bury the initial pain and restlessness it materializes. The pain indicates an undesirable, yet necessary pressing against love residing in you; the restlessness, love striving toward healing. Given a chance to run their natural course, pain and restlessness buttress your interior life: they engender resiliency, crucial to surviving and thriving in an often callous world.

Resisting the perception of vulnerability as weakness, a chink in your spiritual armor, inadequate emotional intelligence necessitates courage. To be fearless in the face of adversity, fill yourself up on faith and hope, joy and thanksgiving, rest and gratitude. Doubt, failing to develop a critical reflective praxis, denying vulnerability time and space to speak—all stifle your progress. Extracting value from disappointment requires one to use her or his organic processing tools—reading, writing, and meditating—leading to a higher, more enlightened self.

After reading yourself through disappointment, after writing yourself through heartache, and after meditating yourself through the unpleasant experience, you birth essential knowledge about resistance, resistance to malevolent forces aiming to destroy you. This knowledge of resistance grants you power to shine light into darkness, power to bring tranquility to tottering people and places—and regimes on the brink of ruin.

When you offer peace to chaotic people and places, two guiding principles are important to maintain: stay focused on the mission and understand that you will face opposition—often formidable opposition. Recognize that your opponents, those trying to thwart your continuous progress, suffer from brokenness, requiring someone like you, someone committed to truth, love, and justice, to move them from a barren place to a fecund place.

Misunderstood by many, disappointment torments people. Frightened, they become docile bodies held captive by it. At some point, however, these docile bodies must shatter the manacles of oppression and depression disappointment imposes.

Bondage, it’s dreadful. The more one surrenders to subjugation, the more she or he will accept it. What subjugated people fail to resist, they fail to comprehend.

Mentally and spiritually enslaved people, blinded by ignorance, face inevitable destruction—unless liberators come to their rescue. Resistance can crush bondage. But how? By unseating the false authority granted to bondage.

You have the power to dethrone disappointment’s reign of terror in your life.

What’s holding you back, though?

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison    

Being Disappointed with Yourself

You’re not always going to meet your own expectations for yourself and the expectations of others. No human being is perfect. A part of being human is understanding that you are incapable of perfection. When you have not met your responsibilities, don’t sit there and wallow in your self-pity—dust yourself off and try again. If you have made some poor choices, it’s okay. Learn from those poor choices and strive to not make them again. If you make them again, keep working not to repeat them. Too many people put too much pressure on themselves to be perfect. For many, it’s almost like a surprise when they don’t do things perfectly. Why would you be surprised? You have not been perfect from the day you were conceived.

You cannot let what you feel others may think about your poor choices worry you that much. You will drive yourself insane trying to please people all the time. It’s impossible to please people all the time because many people don’t even know what “being pleased” is.

Being disappointed is not a good feeling. We have to make sure that we are doing our best to prevent disappointments from occurring. However, no matter how much you are doing to attempt to prevent disappointments from happening they are still going to happen. The effort that you devote to foiling disappointments from occurring can help to reduce the number of disappointments you experience.

If you are never disappointed with yourself, you will never know how proud of yourself you should be when you do something really good or great. Disappointments come to improve us. If everything goes just great for you all the time, you would not feel human. It would also feel like you cannot feel. Do you really want to go through life not being able to feel? I don’t think you really want to go through life not being able to feel.

People think that everything always goes great for me. They look at my level of success, accomplishments, titles, positions, degrees, talents, and etc. and think that every day and everything is wonderful for me. Yes, I’m very successful and highly accomplished but my success and accomplishments did not come without my share of disappointments.  In fact, the more success and accomplishments I earn the greater the pressure I place on myself to be even better. With the tremendous pressure I place on myself to become greater and greater, I experience many disappointments.

Don’t make me be less than human by thinking that everything is always going great for me and that every day is a successful day for me. I am not a robot. I feel. Although my external wrapper and internal coating is much stronger than most, I still feel. I have cloudy days and cloudy moments just as you do. I encourage you not to perceive people who are successful and accomplished to be something larger than human. Yes, we are successful and accomplished but still human.

I take comfort in my disappointments because I did all that I could reasonably do to avoid being disappointed. At the end of the day, all I can ask myself to do is the best I can do. When I’ve done all I can reasonably do to do my best, it’s then that I recognize I don’t have a need to feel disappointed with myself.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison