A disappointment is a loss of status of sorts. It’s odd sort of status we lose, though, because it’s something we’ve never actually held, because it exists in the future. It’s an expectation of a future appointment, a position that we feel entitled to even though we haven’t attained it yet.
We can feel disappointment in ourselves, in other persons, or even about the world in general.
The future is never certain. There is no cosmic plan of things that are meant to be. Things happen, or they don’t.
To appoint means to come to a point, to have arrived at a certain place where everything is guaranteed. An appointment can also refer to an agreed upon meeting, scheduled to occur at a certain place and time. Disappointment is the realization that an apparent appointment was never truly agreed upon, or that someone or something couldn’t follow through with the arrangements.
We imagined the future, but it was never ours to hold. We made predictions that didn’t match reality. We were wrong. The world turned out to be more capricious than we had thought it was.
We arranged for a date with a destiny that was never to be.
The emotion of disappointment advises us to hope for less, and in doing so, makes us feel smaller in the present.
The silver lining of disappointment is relief, the feeling of unexpected joy in reaction to the failure of a dreaded event to arrive.
