The Day of a Thousand Disappointments

For most of my life I've battled the beast in my heart that wants to complain about everything. I've fought the hyper-critical nasty for at least 30 of my years on this planet (if not more). My cynical nature is to look for ways that different people and events disappoint me and then to criticize them in light of my own (assumed) superiority.

Well, not after last week. Last Monday I had a day full of disappointments, but they were all squarely to be laid upon my shoulders. I was no longer the disappointee but the disappointer. The week before I had put together a program that was generally well received at work, but on Monday I arrived to find that those who did not like the program had, in typical southern fashion, waited to assail me with anonymous notes and evaluations about all of the shortcomings of both the program and my professionalism. Some of the criticism was merited, some was not. Some was of that nature of things where whatever one does, someone will like it very much and someone else will dislike it with equal fervor. So, for the most part, I took my deserved lumps, and I chalked the rest up to "you can't please everyone."

Then I went to the dentist. It was my bi-annual check up and cleaning. There was a new oral hygienist. I had not flossed adequately. I've tried. I really have. But flossing to me is very much like regular exercise or any other regimen: boring and seemingly pointless given the immediate pleasure of not doing the thing versus some eventual evil like getting fat or having your gums fall off. My new hygienist was very dissappointed with my bleeding mess of a mouth, and she instructed me firmly and with great warnings about the eventual terrors that were waiting for my undisciplined self just around the corner.

Having taken my lunch break to get my teeth cleaned, I had a quick and guilty lunch (it is such a shame to dirty freshly cleaned teeth!) and returned to the office to see how I could continue to disappoint myself and others during the rest of a memorably ego-smashing day. I worked mightily to clean up my messes until 4 in the afternoon, when I had to take my leave of the office and go and have a meeting with my daughter's teacher.

When I got to the school, My daughter reminded me that I was supposed to have come with the CD that she and another friend needed to use to try out for the school talent show. I hadn't. And thus I failed another, even more important (to me), person. After that I failed to address a few of the issues with her teacher that I had told my wife that I would address. None of the issues seemed important enough at the time for me to mention. And thus I failed to be a great communicator and hyper-involved parent at school.

That night I had a painting class. I had failed to practice during the week, and so I disappointed my teacher. It was a disappointing day.

Looking at the word (as I often do). We see that it combines the prefix "dis," which usually has a negative connotation, with the root appoint and the suffix ment. An appointment is a time set aside for a meeting of some sort. To appoint something is to declare or to make. So a dis-appoint-ment could be a time that is set aside for a negative meeting or, perhaps, a negative happening. Or, when applied to a person, perhaps, we are meant to dis-disappoint, or we are appointed to occasionally dis-troy , dis-combobulate, dis-turb, dis-truct, dis-enfranchise, dis-solve that which is and help to create a world that confounds perfection and emphasizes humanity.

I think the point of days like this is to remind us that we are not and that we cannot be perfect. That all of us are at some moments brilliant successes and at others miserable failures and that neither our successes or our failures ultimately define us. We may be disappointing at times, but we can also be more than a disappointment. We can step beyond the criticism into growth, give everyone the opportunity to fail us, forgive, laugh at ourselves and love more deeply and without reservation. And then our mourning will turn to laughter and our sorrow into joy.