No life lacks disappointment. From the mundane (our favorite sports team loses yet again) to the life-shattering (an unexpected spot on an MRI scan), disappointments punctuate our existence.
In politics, religion, finances, relationships, health, we’re forced repeatedly to confront the failure of hopes, the crumbling of visions. “We all break a little when we fall,” repeats the silky voice of indie-folk singer Gregory Alan Isakov in his song “The Fall.”
It is tempting to try to live such that you will be protected from disappointments, preserved from the slow, steady “breaking” of which Isakov sings. The turtlish approach to life tells us to expect the worst. Don’t dream too big. Keep your distance from others lest they let you down. And maybe, with an outsized portion of luck, you might scrape by without too many disappointments, reaching the finish line of life free of significant scars.
But will you have lived? Is life’s point to reach the end with as few battle scars as possible?
A lack of scars might mean a lack of fight. The experience of defeat implies there was, at least, a struggle, an ambition, a hope. And that is already the beginning of a victory. That is already a sign of living.
You know you have lived if you have been disappointed. You’ve felt the tearing of the heart-fibers as you’re pulled between what you desired and what took place. You rose up, then fell, but at least you reached.
The moment it all falls apart is precisely when things get interesting. Those are the moments that “try men’s souls” – try them in the sense of testing, proving, forging them. I think the real question that determines a person’s character is not, “How often did you succeed?” but rather, “What did you make of defeat?”
There’s an old commercial featuring Michael Jordan. It’s a bit cheesy, yet it speaks to a real truth.
“I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career,” says Jordan as he walks through a darkened hallway. “I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
The Jordan we know was forged more by those missed game-winning shots than he was by those that scored. Or, to take a more serious example, during the Second Punic War, the Romans suffered numerous humiliating and catastrophic defeats at the hands of the Carthaginian general Hannibal. But these defeats, and their refusal to be defined by them, forged them into a force capable of ultimately defeating Hannibal.
A disappointment asks us in straight-up terms, “What are you made of? What is your mettle? When all your high hopes come crashing down, do you buckle? Do you retreat into yourself? Or do you find some way to go forward?”
These are valuable, if uncomfortable, questions. And there really is no other honest way to ask them than to experience and respond to disappointment for yourself.
Isakov sings: “And everybody keeps sayin, ‘Get up. Get up.’”
How do we “get up,” particularly after a cataclysmic disappointment like the death of a loved one, the failure of a relationship, a betrayal, or a sin that seems impossible to remedy?
There isn’t a simple answer. Only the sufferer can answer, working it out inch by inch as he claws through the dark. Whether he finds it in truly convincing terms, not some trite, feel-good slogan, determines that person’s character and the trajectory of his life. Oftentimes, the quest for the answer is the process of getting up. Because it’s a refusal to surrender and say, “It was all for nought.” It’s a refusal to stop believing in stars, even if they’re hidden from view by shrouds of cloud.
The psychologist and concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl was well aware that suffering, defeat, and disappointment are the crucibles in which the human spirit must be born. Yet this truth is one of the reasons that defeat can be bearable.
In his famous book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Frankl wrote,
I speak of a tragic optimism, that is, an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.
My mind goes also to another profoundly inspiring quotation: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” There’s a note of exhaustion in these words. Here is a man who suffered more disappointments than most of us will ever know.
He certainly didn’t reach the finish line without scars.
But he did reach it.
Before becoming a writer, Walker Larson taught literature and history at a private academy. His writing has appeared in over a dozen outlets, including The Hemingway Review, The Epoch Times, and his Substack, The Hazelnut. He is also the author of two novels, Hologram and Song of Spheres.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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