Dancing with Disappointment

by Pradeep Gidwani

As we live our lives, we may have heard people say, “I am so disappointed with you.” Maybe we heard it as child. Maybe we heard it from a friend or from a romantic partner. Maybe we heard it from the program running in our heads. Maybe all that we can see is disappointment, and so we expect it at every turn. In any case, our minds react and our bodies feel the tension.

When we were innocent minds, learning how to navigate the world, we probably valued the opinion of someone we recognized as an authority. And when that person repeated the powerful and familiar phrase, we believed it. We were so sure it had everything to do with us and created a rule in our program that said, “I will not do that again.” The authority figure then came to life in our program. We surrendered our personal power and gave control to a force that we invited in, a force called knowledge as it spoke through the opinions of others. It seemed that throughout our lives that we had no other choice.

It is time to see that the authority figures in our lives exist only in our minds. They are echoes of old agreements that once seemed necessary but now inhibit our happiness and obscure the truth. It is time to forgive the innocent mind that agreed to the opinions of others. Another person might have felt disappointment and projected that feeling on to you, but Life has never been disappointed in you.

It is time to stop dancing with disappointment. It is time to start dancing with Life.