An understated emotion

Now that the dust has settled a bit and we have all got more used to cancellations, postponements and adaptations, it’s time to talk about disappointment. An subtle, insidious, often overlooked emotion, disappointment can be much more powerful than it’s more extroverted companions of anger, pain or grief. It can produce intense feelings, therefore playing a huge role in our day to day decision-making as we work to avoid this discomfort. We’ve all had a taste of it’s bitterness and we use the memories of those feelings to try and prevent future, similarly painful experiences, but how often do we really acknowledge disappointment or take the time to process it? 

Often, it feels like we are ashamed of it, ready to sweep it away under the carpet and out of our lives. We tend to focus instead on different emotions, like sadness, or try to move boldly on and forget about it altogether. Despite the role this emotion plays in our lives - the actions it provokes, the decisions it helps us make in our disappointment-avoidant cultures - we still don’t (want to?) acknowledge it.

With many people experiencing more cultural, financial and geographical freedom than ever before (pre-pandemic at least), it is easy to be lulled into a false sense of control over our futures. The dazzling array of choices available in the modern world obscures and underestimates the possibility of disappointment, as we forget how other peoples’ agendas will interfere unavoidably with our own. The complex, social systems around us mean that countless people and  natural events influence our lives every minute of every day, even as we persuade ourselves that we have autonomy over our lifestyles. Even with all our experience of it then, disappointment keeps surprising us.

And perhaps it is this element of surprise that makes it unpleasant to confront. We often don’t see disappointment coming; it involves a mixture of surprise and sadness. There is a feeling that we have been unexpectedly destabilised somehow, dislodged from the path we thought we were on, leaving us feeling ungrounded and let down. Perhaps we are annoyed with ourselves too - should we have seen this coming? Did we not prepare sufficiently? 

Of course these questions, although understandable, are also unreasonable. We cannot be expected to prepare for everything in life, regardless of the false sense of autonomy we may be sold by the media. One of the most powerful aspects of disappointment comes from the loss of perceived control, the realisation that something unexpected and uninvited has changed our life plans, or our view of someone important. It's an emotion that has a strong negative valence combined with a lowered ability to be controlled. In other words, it’s something that hugely affects us, but that we feel we cannot influence - a powerful and tragic dynamic. No wonder, then, that this feeling provokes such intense discomfort that we would rather get rid of it quickly. 

And then there are the sense of loss and of regret. Disappointment often suggests unfulfilled hope - a missed chance, or escaped opportunity for success. Sometimes this seems to happen by chance and we grieve, mourning the loss of a dream or relationship. At other times we might feel that we had something to do with the outcome and that we could have done something differently to prevent it. Hence, regret: a feeling that lingers on personal choices and causes disappointment to turn inwards towards the self. 

Perhaps it’s not a question of acknowledging disappointment then, but more about finding some way to accept the inevitability of it. Painful as it might be, disappointment will feature in all of our lives from time to time, and probably usefully too. Disappointment tells us something about what we miss, what we are passionate about, or what we need. It teaches us about loss, the cruelty of hindsight and our ability to overcome setbacks. It showcases what we really value and how good we are at appreciating those things when we have them, not taking them for granted. In that way, disappointment can be key in figuring out our identity, our worth and our relationships, helping us to create and maintain meaning in our lives. Today’s disappointment might be yesterday’s hope, but it will also be tomorrow’s.