Disappointments Sometimes things go wrong in events which we are excited to see. An example of this was the launch attempt of SpaceX’s Starship. As I watched the countdown live, there was a boat in a restricted area which the Coast Guard was trying to remove. At T-15 minutes, I remember hearing there was a problem with the pressure. We had been hearing how either one of these things could abort the launch. Then we were told the launch will be aborted but they would continue the countdown to 10 seconds and then abort. I was extremely disappointed, but this kind of thing is common during early launches of a new rocket. I remember when I was on a promotion list for a higher position on my job, and I got it, but I had to work much further away. I was happy to get the promotion, but not happy to have to travel an extra hour to and from work. Sometimes when you get something you wanted, it is not as great as you thought it was going to be. I bet this has happened to many of you. Some even had to move away from a place they loved to another state or country just to better themselves and give their families a better life. I remember being disappointed in grammar school. I took a scholarship test in math. I thought I aced it, only to find out I had a mark of 99.9% and lost the scholarship. I had made a truly stupid mistake on a question worth only one tenth of a point and I will never forget that question. The question was what was 4 squared, and I had entered 8 without thinking. It was more of a question of misreading the question than not knowing the answer. Unfortunately for me, a mark of 100 percent was needed for the scholarship. All of us suffer disappointments in our lives at one time or another. People experience disappointments in their lives in different ways. Sometimes in marriage, love, finances, their job and in other areas. One of the worst types of disappointments, if we can even call them that, is being convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. The advent of DNA testing has found people who were locked up for years before a DNA test showed they were innocent. I wonder how many people have fell in love with someone and that other person just had no interest in them? You see this type of thing being complained about all the time. I am amazed some of these people just can’t move on. I would think torturing yourself like this every day and making yourself miserable is not the best way to spend your life. I was very lucky, when I met my dear late wife, we just hit it off and 57 years later when she died, I loved her as much as the first time I met her. I wish everyone could be as lucky as me. Sometimes people get disappointed financially because they think they found a way to make a lot of money legally. People like Bernie Madoff took advantage of these kinds of people. I always remember being told if something seems too good, be very careful because it probably isn’t. No one questioned him in the beginning. He had devised a pyramid scheme where he collected a lot of money and actually paid incredible interest rates to some of the important people at the top of the pyramid to keep the scheme going. This kept things going for years before he was caught. When things ended there were some very disappointed people. All financial disappointments are not the result of criminal activity however and quite a bit of it has to do with bad investments, which could have been caused by events the investors had no part in, or by downturns in the markets. Take for example those people who are close to retirement and have saw their retirement funds lose money with the current economic climate in this country. There are a lot of people who are working beyond their planned retirement because things are just not working out. Luck is also an element we can not control and bad luck in investing can also be a tremendous disappointment. Things are not always about jobs and finances, or even love. Health plays a big part in our lives, and without good health, some say nothing else matters. We can make all sorts of plans for the future, for our retirement, trips we might want to take and things we might want to do, but if we are not healthy, we may not be able to do any of this. I remember working with a man who decided to retire and took the plan which only provided for him and not for his wife and family. She thought she was covered and when he retired, he died the next day. What a disappointment to her this must have been. I have to wonder how many times something like this has happened. About the only good thing in the story was the fact his children were all adults. There are certain cases where people get hurt on the job and have to retire. In some systems they can’t get their regular family coverage on the pension because it was an on the job injury. They have to hope they can live long enough to take care of their families and not die, because with this type of pension, that is the end. Sometimes people buy things and when they get and use them, they are sorely disappointed. I know this has happened many times with time shares. People have purchased time shares and have not gotten what they thought they would be. For example, the maintenance might continuously go up and the timeshares might not be available when they are wanted. On top of all that, they might not have been able to get out of the unlimited contracts. This is one group of disappointed people. Not only that, but some timeshares are also renting to the public like hotel rooms. All of us have had these disappointments, but many of us have learned how to live with them. Not all disappointments are as powerful as others. When you find out at dinner time someone in your home ate your supper, that is one thing, but to find out someone you care about is in the hospital or has died is completely another. Both do not have the same disappointment effect on us and they shouldn’t because if they did, there would be something wrong with us.
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