The elegance of disappointed hopes

Disappointment has felt like a palpable substance in my life lately. I began this post two weeks ago, a couple of days after I resigned from Cream City Swing. I’m finishing it on my birthday, the day after I broke up with Doug (for real, I might add as a qualifier, for those confused and thinking I already did). I could perhaps classify these two things as the two biggest disappointments in my life so far, but that just sounds melodramatic, and doesn’t seem to contain much truth of the really meaningful sort.

Most of my contributions to Cream City Swing, spanning from the concrete to the theoretical, were in the form of things I'd just gotten started on - just barely starting to learn HTML to manage the website, learning Photoshop and starting to get into flyer and other design, putting together guidelines for swing instructors that never got put in anyone's hands, asking questions and learning about sound equipment, learning to listen to a DJ's set closely, countless hours of planning work, thinking about and integrating principles of leadership and conflict management, etc. etc. All of these things were a sort of budding potential. And isn't that what disappointment is all about? Realizing that potential does not always come to fruition, that our dreams are just a shadow of what might actually happen, that we are not in control?

The sense of disappointment I faced for some time seemed to be largely in realizing that I was giving up on something I believed myself eminently capable of accomplishing in a meaningful way. I saw this endeavor as the culmination of all of my unique talents and potential. There was much to learn, but I could see so clearly the path to learning it, and there's nothing I like more than an opportunity to realize lofty dreams/goals through a series of very concrete actions and challenges. Even the time and the circumstances overall seemed to hold so much potential. And so to see such great potential fall flat as the result of just a couple of particular circumstances and people seemed like some kind of cosmic shame.

In some ways, it is a sort of cosmic shame – or rather, an expression of the generalized cosmic shame. I can’t seem to just get mad and say someone screwed this up for me, because I see the larger picture. I see that events unfolded in a certain way due to all kinds of circumstances, individual personalities, etc. and it became a rather unadvantageouos time to try to accomplish what I was aiming for. I generally do find it very hard to feel a real sense of blame towards anyone in life, as there are always so many factors to consider and we are all struggling with the same human experiences of hope and fear. And yet, the fact that there are so many complex moving parts, and so much underlying fear, seems to lead to all kinds of rather unpleasant things in life. And that’s a shame. It’s THE shame, the simple fact of living in this world.

And yet there can be a kind of poignancy in the pain we feel because things in the world don't seem to manifest in an ideal fashion. We feel it because we want the best for ourselves and others, because we have that sort of nobility at our core. And we feel it because we get twisted up thinking we can get there by controlling things that are so much larger than ourselves, because we get lost in those utterly human experiences of hope and fear. That's a pretty simple equation, and I've come to have a great deal of respect for it. Ironically, accepting just how complicated the world is, and how much is beyond my control, it becomes easier to feel at peace and to feel confident in my ability to navigate that complexity gracefully.

In considering the unraveling of my hopes for Cream City Swing, my description of "a cosmic shame" might be seen as true in the sense that it's one small expression of that larger fact that it's a shame things can't be perfect (or closer to it). But secondly, it's also a ridiculous statement to make! Seriously? Is the universe weeping because a Thursday night swing dance venue won't have quite as high quality of swing instruction, or larger events and levels of quality will never be realized? I'm pretty sure it's got bigger problems to worry about. And being part of the universe, perhaps so should I! I find myself laughing at myself for being bent out of shape about this at all.

In addition to the basic value of seeing this humorously, that general turn of thought has also led me to some meaningful contemplation on what I really want to put my life energy into. There are many things on my mind about what paths to take, educationally, professionally, personally. Running a swing dance organization suddenly feels rather unimportant, and I am grateful for the time and energy I suddenly have to invest in other things – perhaps things that will truly mean more to me at the end of the day. This may be the beginning of a significant shift in my life ambitions.

So I prepare to shift directions. I begin to think in new directions, and I clean up what’s left of the old. Most people who know me well know that I don't much like "unfinished business," at least on a superficial level (I like to have my papers filed and the oldest items checked off my to do list.) Yet somehow, laying disappointed hopes to rest is more like tying things up in a neat package than getting elbow deep in the muck ever was. I've been cleaning out my inbox, assembling all of my files for Tory and Andrea to have (whether they use them or not), filing everything away together in case I might ever need it again. There is a sense of finality, complicated things narrowing down to something very simple.

And so, I am grateful. I am grateful for the fact that I did experience this loss mostly as a generalized “oh, what a shame”, rather than grasping for someone or something to blame and wallowing in my own personal desires. (Not to say I didn’t do that a bit. I’m human, after all.) I am grateful for the quick realization that it’s not such a big deal in the scheme of things. I am grateful for the first realizations of what new opportunities might be pursued in my life. I am grateful for the many lessons I did learn during the few months I invested in Cream City Swing. And I am grateful for this particular lesson: looking my disappointment straight in the face, I find that it's simple, lovely, and workable. It is a very real, tangible experience of what it means to be human in the only world we’ve got.

I’m sure these lessons also apply in the loss of a person and a relationship most dear to me. I feel myself working through them even now, and I am glad for that. But this is also a more difficult loss, and I am focused at present with getting through each day in a reasonable way that emphasizes basic self care. And after all, those nice fluffy things I said about disappointment don’t change the other thing that’s true: seeing its beauty doesn’t stop it hurting. In the midst of difficult emotions, I may be able to hold a more realistic view than I used to be, I may say and know that I will feel better later. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less right now. It might make it hurt more.