Disappointment is a peculiar sort of pain. It's not born of injury or insult. There's no enemy to blame for it, no disease that needs to be cured. It feels both sharp and dull; it both freezes and burns. In its most severe form, it numbs, like the moment between tripping and hitting the ground, an eternal split second where there exists no thought, no emotion, only you tumbling helplessly to the end you never wanted but now can't possibly avoid.
Disappointment hurts like this because it is hope dissolving before our very eyes. The star we struggled so long to reach, that we dreamed of reaching night after long night, vanishes – poof! – as if it was always made of dust, as if it was never meant to be. And the future we dared to imagine disappears along with it.
In that space where our dreams once resided, we find the thing that, deep down, scares us humans most of all.
Uncertainty.
Disappointment is one of life's most merciless reminders that we don't hold the reins of fate. Everything we do is a gamble, is a risk with no guaranteed reward. We can take every step we're supposed to take exactly the way we're supposed to take it. We can be the smartest, the strongest, the most talented, the hardest working person on the planet. We may amass all the material and emotional support a human being can. Fate may still bitch slap our plans. We may still find ourselves in that wretched split second of eternity on our way to a grand face plant. And there won't be a damn thing we can do about it.
This doesn't mean that there's no point to having goals or dreams and working your butt off to accomplish them. Dream, work hard, achieve. Just remember -
We are more than the ends we attain.
Fate may decide to do you dirty and deprive you of what you most desire, but at the end of the day, you'll still be you. Nothing about you will have been diminished. Your worth will not disappear. If you take a good, long look around you, you'll find that the things that matter most – love, compassion, hope – are still there, in abundance if you'll allow. You'll find that you can still get up and take a step on that same path or on a new one. Yes, fate can always switch the route at any moment. But only you can stop moving forward.
So, keep moving forward, my sweet ones. Disappointment is not your destiny. It's only one of a million steps in your journey.
YOU ARE READING
The Sh#% Your Parents Should Tell You
Non-FictionYour parents probably tell you a lot of things like study hard, get a good job, be a decent human being, take out the goddamn garbage for christ's sake. But what they won't tell you are the ugly (and slightly less ugly) truths about life that, if...
