Little disappointments

Life is full of disappointments.

I realize that isn't a very positive way to start a post but really it's true. We grow up taught to expect to be treated in a certain way, that life kind of dictates to us that if you do good thing, good things often come back to us. Now there are no rules of course, it's not an automatic that if you do good you get good but we expect it to happen. Maybe that's where we go wrong...we expect.

Recently my 20 year old niece put a Facebook post out that stated "the sesame street theme song is NOT what it used to be and cookie monster was NOT eating cookies. what?!"

At first it made me giggle and then it made me wonder if she even watched the same Sesame Street I even grew up with. It's funny how we go through life almost automatically without much thought until something makes us stop and we realize something isn't quite right. She is so young and has so much more life to experience and I hope that she is armed with the tools she needs to fight the little disappointments along the way.

I remember living with someone for many, many years and then the first time I came home after he was gone I went to turn on a light that was suddenly no longer there. I remember the feeling that completely overwhelmed me at that very moment.....it was the first time in a really long time I realized I was completely alone and on top of that, I had no lamp. I always took things for granted, I expected things to be the same....but just like the disappointment of the cookie monster no longer eating cookies, I had to change my perception of my own life.

How many times do we have to do that in our lives? We become creatures of habit so easily and it's not until something forces us to change that we realize things are different. Sometimes I get so focused on what I should be doing, what I need to be doing and I forget about the here and now. I get disappointed because I think I should have more, I should be more, I need something outside of what I have and I forget that sometimes where I am at and what I have is good.

We have a family friend who is dying from cancer right now. She takes each day as a gift. Each day she wakes up she gets up and pushes herself to live.....not just for her but for her family. For her each day is a gift and she is absolutely living with no regrets...there is no time. The cancer is moving fast and spreading through her body at an incredible rate yet she is purchasing new clothes and seeing friends and getting her hair done as if her life is going on as planned. Her day must be filled with little disappointments....constantly...yet she plows ahead full throttle. It amazes me.

Some days it feels like the whole world is against me, some days it feels like such a battle just to do the simple things I need to do and then I realize, I am not fighting a ticking monster slowing devouring my insides....amazing. It's amazing to me what the human spirit can over come.

Sometimes life events happen and we don't think we will ever recover and then you come across people who are experience disappointment after disappointment and they just keep going. I admire that ability. I am of the mind set that there must be something better than all this. I just keep living one day at a time doing the best I can...and someday I assume we will find what it is we are looking for and we'll drop our bags and just be home.

Do we just learn to accept life's disappointments or do we build up our tolerance?