Part 1--Readers respond to "Coping with Disappointments: Is Taking Them for Granted a Healthy Response?"

From: Mark Riedy Date: Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 7:00 PM Subject: Essay: Part 1--Readers respond to "Coping with Disappointments: Is Taking Them for Granted a Healthy Response?" Dear Friends and Family, One of the genuine pleasures I derive from writing these essays is that many of you, a varying group from topic to topic, take time to offer your comments on my musings. I learn a lot from your experience and insights. I enjoy taking your words and using them to create new essays like this one, in which I can share your feedback with everyone on the distribution list. Without fail, your comments add depth and richness to the messages contained in my original essays and thereby enrich all of our lives. Collectively, we are neighbors helping neighbors. From your comments it became clear I had only scratched the surface of the issue of how individuals cope with disappointment. A quick refresher is that our two grandsons, ages 16 and 19, traveling with us on a cruise to Mexico, were planning a zip-lining excursion. Because zip-lining is a bit too adventurous for me, I took a "pass" on the opportunity. Unfortunately, the rules required minors (under 21) to have an adult guardian accompany them on the zip-line. I ended up switching our grandsons. to the much tamer Whale Watching excursion my wife and I were planning to take while the boys were zip-lining. When I apologized for letting them down by not being willing to be a zipper, our 19-year-old said something to the effect that it was OK. In this era of COVID he was getting used to being disappointed. His haunting response led me to the essay on coping with disappointments. It's always a good problem to have--selecting which of the responses to publish in these "readers' reactions" essays. In looking over those selected for this essay, I realized I wanted to publish quite a bit of material. So, to avoid one unconscionably long essay I broke the material into two parts. Today's collection of responses became Part 1, consisting of six brief responses. In a few days I will publish Part 2 of the responses, which includes three lengthier messages. 1. "I frequently find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop." Seemed to be a relatively universal feeling among readers. 2. "Your grandson's attitude, most likely, represents a large world-wide population, ranging from not being able to experience new thrills in life to missing a long-anticipated high school prom to waiting another day for a meal--many levels of disappointments. Perhaps these disappointments are healthy reminders of how we had come to expect goodness in life and how quickly it can be taken away. unexpectedly. (Part 2 of these responses, with the approval of the author, who shall remain anonymous, includes a full-page story illustrating how quickly good can be taken away unexpectedly. That author, and the author of the point made here, are two unrelated people.) 3. While walking to the first tee on a golf course recently, a friend who had read and enjoyed the original essay observed that for young adults, and even more so for children, any disappointment is a relatively big thing because they have had relatively few of them in their lives. Along the way to "senior" status we accumulate our fair (and sometimes unfair) share of disappointments, large and small, so each one individually becomes less remark-able. We also learn, when making plans or forming expectations, to temper them in advance with the recognition they might not be fully realized. In effect, whether explicitly or implicitly we assign probabilities to the expected outcomes. In contrast, for children, plans and expectations are pretty much either black or white, yes or no, go or no go. They will come true or won't, but there is no middle ground of uncertainty. In contrast, for me the expectations most likely are in the middle ground, gray rather than black or white, maybe rather than yes or no, can't decide rather than go or no go. 4. Whether plans are important or trivial to someone, with respect to any specific activity (for example, international travel), he or she might adopt two different attitudes. A. They might become ambivalent, feeling that future opportunities to travel internationally are increasingly likely to end up as disappointments. They quit trying. For them the sensation of being disappointed becomes so negative that it outweighs the enjoyment of success. B. They get to the point of no longer caring about pursuing the specific activity in the future. In both instances, the end result is sad. 5. Another friend had this to offer. "COVID has adjusted how I deal with disappointment. I don't think COVID has normalized disappointment, but rather created more space between the disappointment and my reaction. I am disappointed that I could not enjoy the Holiday Bowl this year (it had been canceled), but I did enjoy a lovely quiet dinner and movie with my wife." On the cruise, our behavior basically paralleled this friend's. We ended up substituting not only whale watching for zip-lining, but also took our two grandsons to the ship's upscale Asian restaurant, Tamarind, for dinner that evening. 6. A university President (not from the University of San Diego) sent a kind and generous note, in which he shared an entirely different perspective on the story I'd related about zip-lining. "...I was especially struck by the important role we play as educators, parents and grandparents in the lives of the young people entrusted to our care. Further, I was reminded of how much we can learn from the youth within our midst." From time to time, readers let me know they have passed along these essays to friends, which I take as a compliment. In the future, if you also forward an essay to a friend, please ask them to consider sending me their email address so that I can add them directly to the list. I do not sell the list or use it for any purpose other than distributing my essays, unless I want to write directly to someone to request their approval to identify them in my writing. Over a period of about four years, I think I've asked three people, in total, if I could identify them. In each case they said yes. Mark J. Riedy, PhD Office: 858 481 2677 Mobile: 858 436 6766