The Eight Misconnections of Disappointed People

“I’m so disappointed.” They are possibly the most devastating words a parent can issue to a son or daughter. Not angry; anger is engaged, working, opposing, caring. Disappointment is a conclusion reached after an experience or series of experiences. It is drained of emotion, empty. It is the first cousin of despair. No person wants to be the source of another’s disappointment.

What happens when life itself disappoints? I have over the years observed and thought about people who in their latter years find themselves disappointed with what life has served up. They have somehow misconnected with their own journey, misinterpreted the signs, took the wrong fork.

Eight of these misconnections seem to have more damaging and long lasting results than others. Here they are, in brief, although much could be said of each one.

1. Seeking a goal vs. living a value.

First of all, you must get your values right. How you live is not a matter of adding up the stuff you’ve accumulated or the goals you’ve reached, but upholding the principles on which you stand. When Socrates spoke of the unexamined life, I think he was referring to a life that careens toward this goal and that but never stops to ask why, for what purpose, to what end. The goals becomes unfulfilling an, soon enough, meaningless. Their accomplishment fails to fulfill their promise.

2. Depending on your talents vs. fully preparing.

You reach your potential by training, discipline, self-testing, not by charging forward armed only with raw talent (no matter how much raw talent you have). In his book The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell sings the praises of preparation, discipline, and hard work, citing successes like The Beatles and Bill Gates. When great talent meets hard work, great things happen.

3. Focusing on self vs. engaging with the world. Most self help books are wrong. The path to happiness lies not in self-absorption but in leaving self to connect with the world. The paradoxical result of “engaging outward” is the discovery of your best self. This action is not really “giving of yourself,” but rather connecting with the world to create yourself.

4. Living realistically vs. living as if the best will happen. Realism is the denial of the future, because the realist looks at the past and predicts that the future will be no different. We are excellent at creating the future we are imagining. This is not pie in the sky optimism, but a frank acknowledgement that we can tip the scales in a positive direction by engaging the future in a positive frame of mind.

5. Planning for life vs. planning for events. The FDs (“future disappointed”) never stop planning for a life they never get around to living. The saddest refrain of all is “I can’t wait till I retire.” Life is to be lived, not planned for.

6. Reliving vs. new living. The FDs, whenever they hear a thought, remold it to fit what they already know. They rarely grow, rarely allow the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, the challenging into their lives. The narrative of their life has ended, long before their physical life ends. New living expects the unexpected and the discomfort that accompanies it. Comfort is a devilish taskmaster. It can overtake your life and preclude any chance of happiness.

7. Assessing fear vs. assessing possibilities. Fear is a lousy counselor. Fearful people are governed by prejudice, narrowness, submissiveness, and immobility. There are many more possibilities inherent in experiencing something different than in doing the same thing over again. Check out the different ways animals respond to a fear stimulus: flight, freezing, sweating, cringing, shaking, crying, shrieking. When fear is your advisor, those are the responses advised.

8. Violating the weak vs. protecting the weak. The surest measure of the quality of your life is how you treat those you can control, abuse, or ignore. The choice not to control, abuse, or ignore them is the most moral and therefore most human choice available to you. Parents, pastors, managers, generals, elected officials, judges, or simply the strongest person in the room all have a measure of power and control over others. Exploiting those others, injuring them, failing to lend them a hand diminishes you, reduces your humanness, and creates the worst disappointment possible: disappointment in yourself.

Heart of Bucks

In the heart of Bucks County, the leaves are falling, abandoning the trees they so recently adorned during a surprisingly colorful autumn. So pretty, while it lasts. So bare and raw when gone, until the snow cover brings the pretty back.

The heart of Bucks County. Where is it? What is it? When M. Knight Shyamalan came to Doylestown in 2002 to film the movie “Signs,” he presented an anachronistic version complete with a rural sheriff (sheriff!?), who knows everyone’s first name, and a pastor whose defection from the ministry throws the entire town into a faith crisis. Goofy, but still pretty.

A while back, I attended a high school boys’ basketball game between my children’s school, CB East and CB West. At a propitious moment, the West fans, a lot of them, got up and waved dollar bills across the floor at us, the opponents. We stood accused of being rich and spoiled, I think. Not so pretty.

My friend Vince, a devoted, now retired, teacher from the Evil Empire (Philadelphia), once screamed banshee-like as our car passed the CB East High School and Holicong Middle School complexes. “Look at the size; look at the fields; look at the gym,” he babbled. I was sort of glad he couldn’t see the pool and the auditorium. Since that day the schools have only added to the glitz and glamour.

Vince worked in one of those rundown urban schools infested with math texts written before Descartes, where the closest thing to a pool is the toilet in the boys’ room that just overflowed. Since those days, Philadelphia schools have only sunk lower.

Do I live in the heart of a quaint and neighborly county, or a rich and privileged region with no heart at all? Well, I’ve resided in Doylestown over 30 years, and the answer is not simple.

Yes, there are lots of big houses and big lawns. Parents revere their schools as pre-collegiate institutions with really good interscholastic sports. College is not a must for our kids: familial dispossession is a viable alternative. Neighbors do not know one another as well as they should, and there is a slightly immodest tendency for us to believe that all our privileges are a simple result of our own hard work.

Here in Central Bucks we are not diverse. Among our youth, drugs are a problem because this is America. Nonetheless, the typical Bucks County teen is polite, articulate, hardworking, moral. No kidding. Just check out the kid waiting your table at a nearby restaurant.

A heart beats quietly beneath the gusting leaves and drifting snow. I saw it in the dozens of volunteers that operate our myriad youth programs, in the service groups give time and talent to causes of every stripe, in the neighborly way we stop our carts in the supermarket and catch up with old acquaintances.

Then there are the hearts of gold. I’ve discovered our county is filled with quiet heroes, like the store owner who, at his own expense, provides athletic opportunities for underprivileged youth.

As a former Board member of the Family Service Association of Bucks County, I saw the golden hearts day in and day out. They run the Teen Centers, havens for lost youth. They counsel troubled, broken persons. They organize fundraisers and social events for the benefit of families in stress.

One February I represented the Board at a dinner hosted by an upscale restaurant. The 40 or so guests included men and women served by FSA. They were among the least fortunate of people contending with a variety of challenges.

At my table were folks from AA and other drug treatment programs. Beside me was a pastor and his wife, who were kept busy with a flock of poor and down-on-their-luck people, including immigrants with no one else to give a hand.

Along with the restaurant management, workers and chef, a local bank helped fund the dinner. Two bank managers waited tables. We all posed for a group picture and then made our way into the anonymous night.

They selected February for the dinner because everybody gives to the needy at Christmas and Hanukkah. A couple of months later, in the bleak of winter, they are forgotten. A really nice dinner at a really nice restaurant is a welcome respite when no one else is noticing.

That’s my Bucks County. Full of silent givers and stealth carers. They come out when all the leaves have fallen crispy brown upon a hard, forbidding earth. What they contribute to the dreary winter scene is a bit of warmth, a bit of light, a bit of hope. What they get in return is a place with more to offer than pretty leaves that never last.