Disappointment and Hope: crossing the great divide into 2012

Ashley Mwanza

Today we find ourselves living between the “now” and the “not yet,” in that space we are met by so many disappointments. Disappointment is another instinctive response to the ebb and flow of life, which when intensified becomes discouragement, depression and despair. These three negative states are obstacles to all human endeavour. The challenge is in learning early to regulate, control and balance the emotional ups and downs so well that we never experience discouragement.

Disappointment is something that all of us have encountered one time or another. I think that I would be safe in saying that some of you are battling it right now. We dream and we hope and we set our hearts on certain goals. Then the time comes when we comprehend that our dreams are not coming true. This is an experience that happens eventually to every person. Doors slam hard in front of us. Opportunities seem to evaporate before our very eyes.

Chuck Gallozzi put it well when he said the word disappointment is made up of “dis” and “appointment”. “Dis” means separate, apart, or asunder. So, disappointment describes a feeling of dissatisfaction or anguish, which is experienced when we are torn apart from our expected appointment with fate. Yet, we don't have to experience pain when things don't go our way. The negativity surrounding disappointment exists not in the real world, but only in our mind. It is not the event, but our interpretation of it that causes pain.

2011 has come with its highs and lows, at times I have been left so depressed but I have learnt to accept the lows in as much as I welcome the highs. There are so many situations that don't work out in life. And, that's just the way it is. Sometimes, we can change these situations. Other times, they are fixed and unchangeable and there's nothing that can be done. All this disappointment can lead to low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness, especially if disappointment becomes a way of life. But disappointments are inevitable, we all have them. I write from experience.

Sometimes we fail to recognize how much life’s disappointments have taken a toll on us even as our bodies hold the stories. With pain in our heart, a bottomless feeling in the pit of our stomach, or a sense of collapse in our body, it can be difficult to know what to do. Disappointments are a part of the human experience.  But if you choose to consciously accept life's disappointments, you will discover meaning in your suffering. As sure as we live, disappointments will show up in our lives. Sometimes they may be small, almost petty or seemingly trivial; and at other times they loom large, heartfelt, and sometimes extremely painful.

Disappointments can be quite painful, regardless of their magnitude.  But in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Though we like to talk a lot in religious settings, about this word, hope with smiles on our faces, it is messier than we think. Fear, doubt, abandonment are all words that are cousins of hope as much as faith and freedom are.

Sometimes living with hope means crawling through tunnels of uncertainty with the odour of the past making us want to throw up. Sometimes, we wonder where in the world hope lives, for it doesn’t live at our address. Sometimes, we think our moment of freedom will never come for we’ve been chipping away at the same old same old for so long. Sometimes, as in the case with Andy in the Shawshank Redemption, hope means literally making your way through 5 football fields worth of excrement, the real stuff.

But, just as Andy modelled in this film, we have to keep crawling with hope that when we get to the other side, whenever and wherever this might be that something better will await us. Or, best stated by this film, “You better get busy living or get busy dying.” This is the choice that moving in hope offers us. George Weinberg affirmed that, "Hope never abandons you; you abandon it." 

Oscar Wilde believed  that what seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise. This is supported by Joseph Addison who wrote that, "Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures." So despite what you’re facing or have faced in 2011, it is time to move on in hope. Do not abandon hope.

True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome. True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort.

Let us cross the great divide out of 2011 into 2012 with wings of hope. Faint not, never give up!

Have a blessed Christmas and a blissful 2012!