A Disappointing Post

It may be saying something about me I'd rather keep hidden, but I've been thinking about disappointment.

It began by my wondering if a balanced life would be one that contained as many disappointments felt as it did disappointments caused, only to realize there's no way of knowing how much disappointment I cause. I'm aware, sometimes painfully so, of the disappointments I feel, but there's no telling how often I cause them.

I think it's fair to say that pretty much every time we're disappointed we feel it. If we don't, we're not really disappointed. What we do with those disappointments, how we respond to them, is sort of interesting, mostly because we can blow them out of all proportion. This can lead to painful rants, boring conversations, and blog entries, but I guess it's sort of human to feel upset when things don't work out the way we want. The higher we hold ourselves, maybe, the more likely we are to make a big deal out of them.

How we respond to the disappointments we cause, at least the ones we know about, tells a little about us, too. The more highly we think of ourselves, I think, the more likely we are to slough off the disappointments we cause, most often as being the other person's fault or failing.

I respond fairly poorly to disappointing others, by which I mean depressed. That's pretty much my reaction to everything, though, so it's probably no big deal. I can become a bit frantic if I think about all the disappointments I cause and don't know about, so I try not to do that.

Disregarding them entirely seems to me to be awfully conceited and as counter-productive as obsessing over them. Still, many of the disappointments I've caused haunt me, though that may be a bit dramatic. Some have had real, serious consequences, but those are just the ones I know about. I think I'd be fooling myself if I didn't think there were others, just as huge, that I never knew about.

Who knows how my life might have turned out if I hadn't disappointed some certain person at a critical point in my life? All I can do, I guess, is try to be a good Russell and trust that people will forgive me much more than I do myself.