essay on an unexpected event that led to disappointement
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Day 26: Write about disappointment
When was there a time when you had an expectation that didn't get met? Maybe you set a goal for yourself and totally blew it.
Maybe you promised something to a friend and had to let them down. Maybe life just didn't turn out the way you expected. Write about that.
Today, tell the story, confess the failure, and help us learn with you. How can we, even in the midst of disappointment and despair, still find hope? How can we continue when all seems loss?
Don't just talk about heartache; give us hope for change.
Jeff Goins · 6y
3yJohn Spencer
THE POTHOLE
It can be a pretty disappointing thing to discover that you aren't quite as smart or as clever or as world-wise as you thought you were, or before life teaches you otherwise in a way that there's no getting around or making excuses for or blaming on someone else or putting it off on a technical glitch or equipment malfunction.
When the universe decides you need a lesson, all you can do is hang on and hang in and hope you can find the grace to handle it in a way that you can smile or maybe even laugh about later.
I was especially disappointed the day I proved what I imagine now my friends and family probably always knew, but were too kind to tell me - that sometimes if not often I acted like as my sainted grandmother would have said if she had lived to see the day I tried to teach my son to handle a four wheel drive vehicle:
"John you know we love you more than the sun and the moon and all of the bright stars twinkling in the heavens above but sometimes you act like you haven't got a lick of sense."
It was the day after a hard rain but the sun was out and beckoning.
My son was sixteen and chomping at the bit to learn to drive.
(Well, maybe I was the one chomping at the bit, to impress him a little - or more than a little - with how rough and tumble I could be when it came to being a manly man out there on the sometimes rough and mean terrain of life.)
After all, my vehicle was an Isuzu Trooper. And a hale and hearty bold and bright red beauty she was. When we were together there wasn't a John Wayne movie that I couldn't play a rough rider in (even though as far as I know the only Troopers in any of the Duke's films rode cavalry horses).
But once you get to thinking of yourself as a rugged cowboy, or at least once I did, fine distinctions like grass-fed or gasoline-powered tended to go right out the driver's side window.
So we took the Trooper out onto a patch of the closest thing to being actually offroad behind our subdivision, to where we could barely even see the highway a couple of hundred yards over a red clay embankment.
And my son was great. He handled shifting gears and tight corners and slick muddy road action and paying much more attention than I would have to avoiding crushing small mammals under the wheels of our invincible scarlet beast like a rugged but tender-hearted professional.
I'm not exactly proud of myself, but I gotta admit that I may have even been a little jealous at how easy it seemed to be for him.
So it shouldn't surprise anybody what I did next.
I said, "okay son, you are doing great. Now let's see how you and this baby handles a little rough and tumble."
"I want you to drive right through that big puddle up there and let's wind up this rough riding lesson session by making a big splash - you know just like in your favorite movie!"
(Of course at that moment I was completely oblivious to any possibility that his favorite kind of movie might not be the same as mine.)
And then he said the thing that made me absolutely double down on my direction:
"But Dad, it actually looks like a pretty big pothole and I have no idea how deep it is..."
I don't think I really have to go into a whole lot more detail... I mean, do I really need to embarrass myself much further?
It didn't take that long for the tow-truck to get there.
I love my son fiercely for an omniverse of reasons, but way way high up on the list is that he has both a terrific sense of humor and a deeply rooted instinct for compassion (I'm talking about Journey to the Center of the Earth deep here).
And I love him for the lesson I learned that day without having to lose anything besides a little bit of pride (God - and my endlessly patient family - knows that I have plenty of that to spare).