Like, honestly, how much disappointment can one person endure?
You work long hours at a feverish pace to prepare for the big thing that is coming, pouring not only your skills and work ethic but your hope and heart and soul and passion into making that big thing a success, making back up plans and back-ups for back-ups so that absolutely everything within your control is considered, documented, and read… and then someone else decides it won’t happen, based on shifty criteria that is outside of your control, and it feels like all of that work, time, energy is flushed down the drain, and you stand there feeling numb as you watch, unseeingly, the water swirl down into the depths, along with your hope, heart, soul, and passion.
You enter into a relationship even though your intuition tells you it might be a bad idea – fear, you think, is what is saying that, and you don’t want fear to run your life so you forge ahead and put your heart out there trusting the words of someone else who makes you feel amazing for awhile. But then, as it turns out, what you’ve thought a million times is too good to be true actually is, and he tramples on your heart like an unfeeling monster and you wonder why did you let yourself think this time it could be, would be different?
You spend an inordinate amount of time and emotional energy trying to prove to others you’re not the enemy; you’re there for them, you support them, you want to do everything in your power to see them achieve success… and then you get an email that feels like a punch in the gut, leaving you breathless and gasping for days and you wonder why you keep pouring your heart out when it seems you’re the only one giving your all to this.
Maybe it would be easier not to feel.
And you start to feel like your reality is just experiencing one disappointment after another, and is it worth it to keep feeling so much? Maybe just numbing out to the disappointment would be the way to go.
But, by numbing out and not feeling the lows, you won’t feel the highs, either. And that sounds like a terrible way to live.
Because even though those lows are real, so are the highs:
Snorkeling with seals in Cape Town (video below)
Flourishing avocados grown in lockdown
Being literally pulled outside my comfort zone to surf waves bigger than any I’ve tried before, and loving it.
Reaching deep down into the wells of courage to ask for something my heart is longing for, and getting a resounding yes in return.
Joining a new community I wasn’t sure about and absolutely loving it and loving the fruit of those efforts in my life.
Getting an email from someone above me in the hierarchy that is complementary, thoughtful, makes me feel seen, appreciated, and so grateful my dream job is still a dream even in the ridiculousness of this last year.
Feeling the excitement of my family all getting vaccinated, so I can plan a trip home that has been a long time in coming.
An old flame is rekindled and fanned quickly into flames of hope, possibility, adventure, excitement, and joy.
This last year has been an awful one. And it’s been amazing. And once again I’m grateful I can feel because it means I am alive. And that’s really the best way to be. Life, to the full, not life to the happy, means we have the privilege of feeling all the things… and yet, regardless of the moment, we know that truth always wins, love always perseveres, and hope remains though it all.
Let us begin 