Our theme for September, Expectation, led me to think about what happens when our expectations aren’t met. One name for unmet expectations is “disappointment.” Disappointment is our emotional and mental response to not getting what we want, what we expect, when we want or expect it. It’s the dissatisfaction that arises when our expectations aren’t matched by outcomes we perceive to be congruent with them.

Unmet expectations are one key dimension of what’s happening in our church community right now. We went into the search process that resulted in hiring Rev. Seth as our new settled minister with expectations, both communal and individual. We had additional expectations of what our church community would be like after he arrived. While unmet expectations aren’t the whole story of what’s happened, they are certainly a significant part of it. As we begin the healing process, perhaps it is useful to look at this aspect.

The types of situations that lead to disappointment tend to fall into one of several broad categories. I’d invite you to reflect and see whether you can identify these disappointment triggers in your own experience.

• We can be disappointed by other people. They don’t meet our expectations, or they say or do things that hurt us. We come to feel they aren’t quite who we thought they were. They don’t “measure up,” as we see it. Some of us clearly feel this kind of disillusionment now. By itself, this sense of things can lead to putting all the blame on one person, a “scapegoat.” When we do this, we sidestep the discomfort of taking any responsibility for the situation in which we find ourselves. And it is also disempowering.
• We can be disappointed in situations over which we had at least some control and therefore feel some responsibility when they don’t turn out as we’d hoped. After all, a majority of us voted to hire Rev. Seth. The recognition of this aspect of disappointment provides a checkrein on the human tendency to look for a scapegoat. It isn’t easy to accept that we may be partially responsible. Accepting appropriate responsibility, however, empowers us to make positive changes, to do things differently.
• We can be disappointed in ourselves. We fail to live up to our own expectations of ourselves. This is where the discomfort with accepting responsibility comes from. If we had only [fill in some form of “been more aware, done things differently…] maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

The teachings of the Buddha provide me with some hints about how to live creatively with the reality of disappointment. Buddhism teaches that there are three (or four, depending on which teacher we’re following) characteristics that pertain to all of existence. They tell us about the nature of existence and help us to know what to do in response. Remember that the Buddha’s teaching always had a therapeutic bent. He wasn’t interested in the characteristics of existence for their own sake, but because understanding them can help lessen our distress in the face of adversity.

The first characteristic of existence I want to focus on here is dukkha. Dukkha is a Pali term that roughly corresponds to several English words including suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration. It isn’t far-fetched to suggest that disappointment might be yet another way to interpret dukkha.

Dukkha means that all of existence, by its very nature, includes disappointment. The Buddha did not in any way mean that there is no pleasure, no comfort, no joy and happiness—far from it. He did mean that disappointment is part of the whole picture. As the poet Khalil Gibran said of joy and sorrow, they are inseparable: “Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

Dukkha—in its manifestation as disappointment—simply is. It’s an aspect of reality, woven into the fabric of our existence. This suggests to me that a first step in living creatively with disappointment is to accept it. When we’re disappointed, we’ve simply gotten one of our pieces of a universal human experience. It’s a natural, normal aspect of life.

Another way of looking at it is to remember that when we expect reality—ourselves, other people, life in general—to be other than it is, we’re headed straight for dukkha in one form or another, often as disappointment. We make mistakes; other people make mistakes. Things don’t turn out as we had planned, expected, hoped. That’s the way it is.

This, then, leads to the other feature of reality that’s most relevant here, a fourth according to some teachers. The same reality that is beset by the pain of disappointment, frustration and shattered expectations, is also Nirvana—the supreme state free from suffering.  Freedom for life. This precious human life, human community, at its best. The point, I think, is that we do not have to be buffeted about by the winds of disappointment. Things can be better. There are ways, of which Buddhism teaches us some, to make our lives better, calmer, happier, less troubled:

• Disappointment is simply part of life; it isn’t aimed at us personally.
• Reality is what it is in any given moment, and we do well not to expect it to be different than it is.
• Everything changes. Nothing is permanent, including disappointment.
• This very life—with its inevitable disappointments large and small—is indeed Nirvana, just as it is.
• If we keep these things in mind, we free up our mental and emotional energy to work to change the things we can change to make things better.

May we use our disappointment as a springboard to work together toward a new reality.

Rev. Julia