Life, You're Such A Buzz Kill Sometimes! (Part A)

As I have been searching for a job the past couple months, the feelings of frustrations and discouragement that accompany repetitive disappointments have become ever present in the cross-heirs of my life.

There's the big stuff... Dad passing away 7 months ago; dad not being there to see me graduate; dad not being around on holidays; zero respectable job offers to start a career with; countless job rejection e-mails; not ever hearing back from a company after an interview that seemed to go well; my inability to make the payments on my creditcards; areas I chose to place my blief, not delivering on promises; watching people I care about make poor decisions that will cause years, potentially decades, of unnecessary trials and emotional/spiritual repair.

And the smaller stuff... Seemingly promising potential dates falling through due to claimed illness or getting serious with another guy days before our date was to take place ("Danny, that's just bad timing, i'm sure that the girl was just uncertain of where she stood with the guy"

I would agree that it was bad timing, except this same reason came up 3 times in a month period by 3 girls with no affiliation to one another); coming within a midgets reach of advancing another week in my men's league softball tournament; my chap sticks disappearing from my pants pockets.

Like most people, when multiple things in life seem to all go wrong, I am inclined to question EVERYTHING! Nothing is off limits, my subconscious tells the other departments in my brain, "nothing is going right, you guys must not be doing your jobs correctly!" and so the metal analysis goes into hyperdrive to identify the decisions I have made incorrectly and areas where change may be beneficial. This approach causes anxiety and the portion of my brain that requires some stability panics and begins to get a strong grasp on any idea that hasn't been confiscated by the analysis.

If my decisions in education, religion, morals, opinions, socializing, and expectations are all under intense investigation, what is left for stability?

Answer: Not a whole lot. The only thing that feels safe to rely on is personal experience. What can I know other than what I have personally witnessed? If I have witnessed it, how can I know that my conclusions were A. Correct and B. the only viable conclusion? As the contrasting gobbles up the remaining data in the pool, the stability has little left to feast on causing it to become weak, unguarded, and defenseless.



The philosophical area of my brain that was previously in exile, hid patiently by the wayside, waiting for an opportunity to storm the gate and cause even the most basic of existential assumptions of what is real face the interrogation light.





In the past, this situation felt a little terrifying and caused a lack of self confidence. But this isn't my first rodeo, I have faced discouragement and disappointments enough times that this time I welcome the uncertainty of existence and lack of personal direction.



What's Different This Time?
In the past, I would become depressed when I felt I was without guidance or direction. This time, i'm not scared, I don't feel depressed. I once had a philosophy professor who related to having similar experiences that would cause him to go into deep depressions. He told me that this had continued to happen until he met his wife who is an extremely loving women who he cares very deeply for. He said that he no longer loses himself in philosophical thought because whenever he feels himself start to go down that road, he can focus on the love he has for his wife and the love she has for him and that is more important to him than anything. He feels it so greatly that it doesn't matter to him whether that experience is real or not because he doesn't want anything more than that love.

Now some might say that a real philosopher would only want to know the truth even if it wasn't beneficial for his perception of existence, but maybe that is why this professor works for UVU instead of an Ivy League University. For me personally though, I am not a philosopher, I don't have to devote my life to answering all the questions, so for me his advice was extremely helpful. While I am not married nor have I loved anyone to the extent that he was describing, I thought about it a little and recognized that it wasn't just a feeling that kept him grounded, it was that he made the concept of "love" and absolute truth for himself. No matter what questions he was faced with, he could always rely on "love" to be stable and immovable in his life.

So How Do You Overcome Disappointment?
I think the way to overcome times of disappointment and discouragement is by finding a perceived absolute truth in your life that you know you can turn to be stable and unquestionable. For example, in the movie Inception the only way they could be certain that they were not in somebody else's dream was if they had a totem, a detailed object that nobody knew the complete look or feel of. If they wanted to be certain they were not living in a dream, they would check their totem and would then know without doubt. Much like the effect of the totem, a perceived absolute truth will help you regain focus and give you a place to start.

For me, I do not have that love that my philosophy professor has to rely on, but what I do have access to is hope

What If Having Hope For Something Is The Very Thing That Caused Disappointment In The First Place?

It's true that you can't really be disappointed if you didn't have hope to begin with. But there are two different types of hope.
1. Hope that brings excitement to life.
2. Hope that brings meaning to life.
The hope that helps bring meaning to life will not disappoint. Tune in to part B of this two part post for more on hope.

INSPIRATIONS FOR THIS POST: Angela Baranowski, Professor Chris Foster, Ben Larson, Terri Baranowski, Eric Baranowski