on: disappointment
Henry Ward Beecher once said that "one's greatest success comes after
their greatest disappointments". Is disappointment a failure of some
sort? I think it's an apt description, considering some cosmic gear of
the universe has to fail a being's hope in order for that person to
experience disappointment. So there it is: Disappointment, then is
the failure of hope. And in the realm of Mr. Beecher's notion, it is
through our greatest defeats, our greatest successes are realized.
Whether it's by way of perseverance or some other means of will,
disappointment makes us stronger humans. I think disappointment is one
of those rites of passage as a human being. Just like up needs down,
we wouldn't hold on so dearly to hope if we had never been
disappointed in our lives. And of course, the painful irony there is
that while disappointment fuels hope, it also discourages it at the
same time. Disappointment fosters fear, making hope that much more a
difficult concept to grasp. So I guess in the end, disappointment
tempers the will of a man, challenging him to live his life without
fear.
Comments
To consistently perform at that high of a level, they have this innate knowledge that there is a direct relationship between the amount of time they put into an activity and the return on their performance. I don't know if it's necessarily the fear of failure that drives them, cause that would only motivate them just enough not to fail, but wouldn't motivate them enough to go that preverbial extra mile. If we look at it from that perspective, then it's not the fear of failure that drives them, but the pursuit of perfection. For those that put in the extra rep, that additional hour in the gym or that time to perfect their craft anything less then perfection can be viewed as a dissapointment.