Bright Lights, Big City

I've been thinking about disappointments. And how to deal with them. How to handle that bitter taste. And the sadness.

You must know what I mean. Relationships that wither. Expectations that dessicate. Hopes that die. Plans that collapse. Love that fades away. Friends who pass on. Children who move away. Parents who die. Machines that rust and fall apart. Treasures that rot. Fabric eaten by moths. Politicians who don't deliver. The list is long. And it's inexhaustible. It's about what we want but cannot have. It's about what we want to get rid of but cannot shed. The Buddha was right. Our clinging makes us suffer. And we cling. Oh how we suffer.

Disappointment is just a particular form of sorrow, of suffering. It's everywhere and as common as dust. It begins in expectations and ends in rubble.

I could get angry about this. Many people do. But that doesn't do any good. I could yell about how unjust, unfair, improper, illegal, brutal and stupid it is. I could want to fight and look for a brawl. But that doesn't matter. The hurt remains. It persists despite how I distract myself.

I could catalog my disappointments for you. Disappointments in love. And in politics, which might be the same thing. Disappointments about health. Disappointments about wealth, fame, esteem. And in all of the other human areas in which I didn't get what I wanted or expected or desired. Or what I deserved. I could give you, if I haven't already done it in installments over the past few years, a long list of my many, many grievances. But that's not why I'm writing now. No. I'm writing now because I want ever so slightly to shift our attention, to shift how we deal with our inevitable and pervasive and continual disappointments.

Which brings me to the blues.

Here's the cardinal blues idea: things are disappointing and they hurt us in our hearts and souls. We all have these profound hurts. But, and this is the biggest but in the blues, if we're going to keep our souls and our hearts and our passion and our humanity alive, we need to release these hurts and pound them out and scream them out and see them for the rich, beautiful, human feelings they are. We want to embrace them in all their humanity. We want to embrace that we love deeply and that, sadly, we're disappointed. It doesn't matter whether it's a lover, or a friend, or a country, or a political party, or a group, or an idea. None of that matters.

And it doesn't matter how much it hurts. Sometimes it really stings. I just want to sing and dance the song of life one more day. I want to celebrate that I'm alive, I'm human, and I feel it deeply, deeply in my heart. Here's what I mean: