Use the disappointments in life

It is amazing how disappointments can take various forms in life.

I think often our childhoods are filled with little disappointments such as not getting something we really wanted – that pony.

Perhaps by not winning the spelling bee or the science fair after so much practice and effort in preparing the perfect project.

Some gave me the opportunity to learn a lesson: humility; sportsmanship; patience; or understanding that a pony couldn’t live in a small suburban back yard.

Although I did later have a couple of chickens, they weren’t much good for riding after the bad guys. At least I never saw Matt Dillon or Festus on one. I did see Granny riding what she thought was a supersized chicken on “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Mine never grew to that size.

As I moved into the teen years, the disappointments tended to be more in the lines of not successfully traveling the lake of love. Often I found myself swooning but never managed to find a girl upon whom I swooned doing the same in return. That yielded a lot of heart hurting during the growth into adulthood.

Also finding close friends on whom I could rely proved to be a similar adventure eventually seeing most of my childhood associations fade as life took us in different directions.

While many have issues on the professional side, I seemed to excel there finding few issues to trip me whether it was finding a job or pursuing whatever God had in store with my music or acting career.

You would think as you get bigger, those things that disappoint you would grow larger but once again with the exception of not landing just the right job when I got out of college, and still failing in paddling my boat with great accuracy through the lake of love, life didn’t provide me with supersized disappointments.

Illnesses, loss of family and friends, losing a job, my entertainment career not exactly taking the path I thought it should, were all among the myriad of experiences that make up my life.

The disappointments were often created in my own mind and came about by my own actions. For better or worse, it is our own desires and choices that drive success or failure.

It is whether we attach great importance on the failure that decides ultimately how heavily our heart carries the experience.

They were what I might at the time consider to be drops into the Grand Canyon. Being dumped by a girl you care for is always a large fall, no matter what your age.

Losing the esteem or respect of someone you look to as a mentor by choosing a path that was different than they desired can also be a deep crevice on the face of your life.

Hurts and disappointments can linger if we let them. They can plaque our thoughts, bring gloom and sadness, they can stir blame, hate, and jealousy within our souls.

As I now look back, while my disappointments seemed like mountains at the time, those moments were nothing more than grains of sand along the path that I walk.

They provide the roughness upon which the grain of my life is smoothed and shaped.

Without them I would not be the man that I am. I thank God for the bad days, the learned lessons and the things that did not come to pass.