I was notified that my candidacy for a
position I was really interested in was declined. Now, sure we all have our disappointing moments;
that comes in the package of living well.
I know for me, I’d be deceiving myself if I thought that I would only
experience positive events as some divine sign of my being special. Or, that my
life was somehow granted a pass on the unpleasant. In fact, given a chance to consider it, I’d
say such a situation would be a prison of pleasure. True as any fantasy, it’d be fun to linger on
the possibilities of effortless bliss, but I’m season enough from the battles
well fought to know nothing given has value; you got to grab it. Who doesn’t tell themselves they have to
deserve favor? Earn one’s bread sort of
ethos?
So then, back to the disappointment; I
enlisted some organizational spies to ferret out what was going on with the
selection process. In so doing, find
that the interviewing portion of the process had closed; finished and I wasn’t
called. Connecting the dots, that would
mean I wasn’t invited to the party. On
the face of it I must admit, I was stunned that my glaring-perfect-fit
qualities didn’t get me the job right away, (and with fanfare near parade proportion
no less); but then I recall I decided to cultivate patients and allow the
process to work it’s enviable course to my conclusion. After all, the processes should be absent of
(other people’s) bias. When the wait
became prolonged, even for the dullest of toady appointments to do their job, I
had to resort to skullduggery. All of
that to acknowledge that I was not calculating the signs in their correct order.
So then, my dismay was born in realizing that the process was finished and I was not selected the obvious
best choice. Mixed in with my chagrin was
a little self-incriminating-embarrassment for failing to read the signs correctly.
But, the bigger and larger dead elephant in my personal parlor became
immediately apparent; I suddenly lost my purpose.
From
my training, I am acutely aware how much competence plays in self esteem. And that competence is the anchor to an overarching
sense of well-being. No matter the
situation or the conditions of our living moments we must feel competent in
accomplishing our self appointed tasks; even if those tasks are asked of us by externally
driven demands. We adopt them as
our own, and sally forth to take on the dragons of our day. In those moments when we consider we are
inadequate to the task, if we deem we have not enough armor, or our sword too
dull, then there is crises. What greater
crises in any life than lack? Not
absence of a key ingredient, say live batteries for a flashlight, because in
those cases we know how to solve the problem of necessary. Lack, in and of itself, means there is a halt
to progress without solution; so then we face an emotional/mental oubliette (dead-end dungeon).
How
sad to experience such dark disappointment.
Yet it is in these disillusioned times, when the fire of fantasy burns
out, leaving only the actual. I am once
more reminded of the formula:
Expectations are unquestioned, and/or unexamined self-fulfilling
prophecy. When unmet, disappointment occurs. Another way of saying it is this; unfettered wishes.
Walking
in life trusting in our expectations we WILL travel further and further from
the actual. And life can be very
indulgent in this, making sure there is clarity at just how unimportant any of
us singularly really are to the huge movement of the universe. But still, there
is kindness in existence. When that difference can no longer be sustained by
the power of our will-to-be, then crises snaps us back on course to where and
when there is no resistance to what is; Here and Now.
In conclusion on this very short assessment of
consequential relationship, for every disappointment comes the new beginning.
Of
course most of us, (me for certain) will begin laying tiles on a road built mostly
on expectations. It’s what we do…it’s
how we learn.
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