Disappointment

I was once told that 90 percent of all disappointment is the result of unrealistic expectation.

Think about that for a moment; it makes sense, doesn't it? Consider a recent disappointment. Was it one of the rare occurrences when something truly out of the ordinary happened? Or, were you hoping for something, envisioning some perfect scenario, and reality came swooping in to bitchslap you back to the everyday?

I can honestly say that for me, most of the time my disappointment is my own fault.

So it becomes a game of managing expectations. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst, as they say. I'm not one to adopt a defeatist attitude; no, never! But let's take a recent race as an example. In the sprint tri last weekend, I didn't have any hard and fast goals. I just wanted to finish happy, do my best, and perhaps do better than I did in the same race the previous year. I had followed my training plan at about 75 percent, so I knew there was an excellent chance I would reach my goals.

My expectations were realistic.

Now, if I'd said I wanted to come in under two hours - which I secretly did, but I knew I hadn't trained at that level - I would have been disappointed. But that's not the headspace I occupied. I kept myself rooted in reality.

Consider, too, when it isn't you who disappoints you, but someone else. When people disappoint us, it often hurts more, because we are completely unable to control what's happening around us. We can only manage our feelings, our expectations. So a friend fails to meet my expectations by being exactly who she is ... who she's always been. Sure, she's still an asshole (and - here's the hard lesson - probably not really a friend) but my disappointment has a lot more to do with my fervent hope that she'll behave in a way that's out of character than it does with who she is.

Who she is remains the same.

The trick is to love people where they are. I ask people to love me, train wreck and all. They can choose to do so, or not to, and that's really okay. (Unless you're my family; sorry, man, you're stuck.) If they choose to come along for the ride, they buy in to my occasional neediness, the short temper, the high expectations and the ... oh, what's the word? ... unrepentant quirkiness. (That's my nice way of saying "weird".) On the other hand, they also get unfailing support, real love straight from my heart, willingness to help out with just about anything (unless you need money or math tutoring) and acceptance. It's a pretty fair trade.

Sometimes, we're gonna disappoint people. Sometimes, we're gonna be disappointed. But if we can remember why we love people in the first place - if we're willing to love people as they are instead of how we wish they could be - I think we could go a long way toward tempering our disappointment.

And if not, my hope is that there's someone there to listen while we work through it.

Where the real damage comes from

It's hard for me to believe, from where I sit here in 2013, that we are still arguing about gay marriage.

I've been married. I didn't have a straight marriage; I just had a marriage. And that's all anyone wants - the opportunity to love and be loved, with all the rights afforded with the legal agreement that comes with marriage. But because there are men who want to enter into marriage with men, and women who wish to do so with women, society has decided their commitment isn't valid. Seems off to me, that we'd care so much.

Watching an interview the other day, one person asked the other if he thought Christ was pleased with gay couples. And I thought, if everything that displeased Christ was illegal, we'd need more cops. And the very first thing we'd have to make illegal is adultery, followed quickly by divorce.

Jesus had nothing to say on the subject of homosexuality. Nothing. The Bible says precious little about it; there is but one line in Leviticus that says "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination." That's it. (And don't get me started about how - if one must take one's Bible literally - then one must concede that God must be hunky-dory with lesbians.)

I'm no theologian, but I do know that there are substantially more Bible entries dealing with divorce, and even more about adultery. A quick search turned up 59 passages on divorce, and 109 on adultery, either of which is so much more than one. And the thing is, I think we get hung up on the sex part of homosexuality. We (and by "we" I don't meal all of us; I mean those who oppose the gay thing) find it icky (and a litany of other adjectives) so we rail against it. Which is our right, I suppose.

But stop saying that you're casting aside gay citizens' wishes to join into a recognized, committed relationship based on Christianity. Just admit that it has more to do with the fact that you think it's icky. Because I'm here to tell you, having my husband cheat on me and going through a divorce did more damage to me, to my soul, my spirit and my hope for my future than any gay marriage ever can.