How do we deal with disappointment?

Oct 03, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – There was once a young man who had spent years preparing for what he believed would be the most important moment of his life.

He studied late into the night. He sacrificed weekends. He turned down invitations from friends because he had a goal. When the opportunity finally came, he was certain that everything would fall into place.

It did not. The position went to someone else.

At first, he was stunned. Then came anger. Then embarrassment. Then the familiar parade of questions: Why me? What did I do wrong? Was all that effort wasted? Why does life reward people who seem to have done less?

For several days, he carried his disappointment everywhere he went. Finally, he asked me. I, in turn, asked Guru.

I related what the young man had said, “I worked for this,” the young man complained. “I did everything I was supposed to do. And I still lost.”

The Guru listened quietly. Then he said, “Perhaps the young man has confused disappointment with defeat. His disappointment is real, but you have not yet decided what it means.”

I pondered on what the Guru had said.

We sometimes pretend that disappointment is a sign of weakness. We tell ourselves to “move on,” “forget about it,” or “don’t let it bother you.” But disappointment is a perfectly human response when reality fails to meet our expectations. If you wanted something badly, worked hard for it and did not get it, you entitled to feel the loss.

The important thing is not to build a permanent home inside that feeling. You may have been rejected, but you are not a reject. You may have failed at something, but you are not a failure. You may have lost an opportunity, but you have not lost every opportunity.

Second, resist the temptation to turn disappointment into a verdict on yourself. One of the most terrible things we do to ourselves is to take a single event and make it evidence for a much larger conclusion. “I didn’t get the job therefore I am not good enough. The relationship ended; therefore, nobody will ever love me. The business failed therefore I cannot succeed. Someone else was chosen, therefore I have no value.”

Sometimes the better candidate gets overlooked. Sometimes, the better party loses. Sometimes circumstances change. Sometimes timing is wrong. Sometimes other people make decisions based on considerations we cannot see. And sometimes, frankly, we make mistakes.

The mature response is not to deny any of these possibilities. It is to ask: What can I learn from what happened? That brings us to the third lesson. Separate what you can control from what you cannot. You cannot control whether someone chooses you. You cannot control another person’s behaviour, the timing of an opportunity, the economy, the weather, or the unexpected turn that life sometimes takes.

But you can control what you do next. You can improve your skills. You can make another application. You can apologise. You can try again. You can change direction. You can decide that this particular door closing will not persuade you to stop knocking on doors altogether.

And finally, Guru says, do not waste your disappointment. Every disappointment contains a question. What was I expecting? Why did this matter so much to me? Was my expectation realistic? What did this experience reveal about me? What should I do differently next time?

Sometimes disappointment teaches humility. Sometimes it reveals that the thing we desperately wanted was not actually the thing we needed. And occasionally, what feels like a closed door turns out to be a redirection.

That does not mean every disappointment is secretly a blessing. Some disappointments are simply painful. Some losses remain losses. We should not insult genuine pain by wrapping it in a convenient slogan. But even when we cannot change what happened, we can decide what happens after it.

Remember the young man in our story? A year later, he encountered the person who had been chosen instead of him. The other person had struggled terribly in the new position and eventually left it.

The young man had taken another opportunity, learned new skills and discovered a path he had never previously considered. He thought about the Guru’s words.

He had believed he had lost. What he had actually lost was only one possibility. Life had not ended. It had continued. And perhaps that is the secret of dealing with disappointment: Feel it. Learn from it. But do not let it define the rest of your story.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

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• anger, disappointment, embarrassment, Peeping Tom

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