Disappointment

Disappointment ©

By

Michael Casey

The Summer is the period of most disappointment, you get your exam results and they are so important nowadays. My own were a very long time ago now. Your Life is in that envelope, or so you think. Life goes on with or without you, straight As or all Es , though the names and numbering of exam grades have all changed now. So what are you going to do next? You can always get a job in Woolworths was the safety net reply before the exam results, and afterwards, Woolworths was not needed.

I can remember my brother getting a telegram saying he had got into Oxford. Nobody had a phone in the house then, mobiles were not even invented. He just carried on studying, in those days you did the Oxbridge exam before, yes before your A levels. My other brother failed the Oxbridge I seem to remember, but then he got 4 straight As, so he had a gap year as a coal miner, before the word gap year was invented 40 years ago this was. Then he got into Cambridge via inverse snobbery, and 4 straight As.

You can be disappointed by many things, your lover only lasted an hour and he still wore his socks in bed. He did not notice your suntan, fake from a bottle, and he didn’t know all the gossip from the Kardasians. So you were disappointed, you do like conversation in bed after all. If you asked him about asset management and property yield then he’d be full of conversation. But you would think asset management was about boob jobs or lip pumping. And yielding was something to do with sex. You are an unmatched couple who only have one thing in common, coupling. He is just a banker, and you own a tanning salon.

Moving on, moving on, what about disappointment? How do you react to and live with disappointment? This is the true test of your character, speaking as somebody who has fallen over a few times, and no I don’t mean because I’m a drunk, quiet the reverse, our lodgers were all drunks, which means we went the polar opposite way. So what do you do when you are disappointed? First of all don’t panic, if she really loves you things will improve with practice, and yes I’m talking about learning all the hits from Abba. Though it could be car mechanics for beginners, or the boring old Karma Sutra and whatever old India cook book you cook and simmer with together. It is a cook book isn’t it, that’s what the little old lady in the second hand book store told me.

So after a disappointment or a failure you just have to pick yourself up and even give yourself a kick up the arse as my own mother once told me. The disappointment is in front of you like a giant iceberg, but ice melts and if you turn your back on it then you cannot even see it. You cannot see the wood for the trees as my brother once told me 45 years ago. But by stepping back and lifting yourself up, even on somebody else’s shoulders then you can overcome any disappointment.

And yes don’t confuse it with one of those recipes from your Karma Sutra, too much spice is bad for you after all, but it does put all disappointments in perspective.