You can make a strong case that disappointment 1ies at the heart of the human condition, deeper and more influential than we care to admit. Others disappoint us. Just as often, we disappoint ourselves. It’s a universal affliction, maybe inevitable, being human and therefore imperfect.
I thought about that as I watched the Milwaukee Brewers bouncing around the infield after winning the World Series last week. After so many disappointing seasons, the Brewers are indisputably the best team in baseball.
Milwaukee, the entire state of Wisconsin, and Brewers fans nationwide are exulting in a rare and exquisite sensation: the absence of disappointment. Just the opposite, in fact — euphoria being the principal feeling.
And I noticed something else. While the Brewers did their impersonation of a group hug in a Bouncy House, the camera panned players in the Tampa Bay Rays dugout, who, to my surprise, did not head into the locker room in disgust or dejection as one might expect. They didn’t hang their heads. They didn’t look jealous or sad or angry. Instead they couldn’t take their eyes off the unfolding celebration, as if thinking, “Next year for sure.” But the losing team hardly ever makes it back the following year. For some, this is as close as they will ever come to being World Series champions.
Anyone who has played baseball, and every dedicated fan, has a partnership with disappointment. Every year, only one team wins it all. That leaves a lot of disappointed people, from coast to coast, year after year. We are gluttons for disappointment.
The Brewers themselves are a prime example. They made the playoffs eight times in the last nine years. In five of the last six, to the disappointment of Cubs fans, they won the Central Division. Yet until this year, they came up empty in the post-season. I felt sorry for their fans. With two teams here, Chicago baseball fans, more than most, can sympathize with exercises in futility.
Before this season, Brewers fans might have thought they would never experience the ecstasy of winning it all. But now they have, and I’m happy for them — as long as they don’t make a habit of it.
Meanwhile, White Sox fans experienced something almost magical this year. After 100+ losses for three straight seasons, this team wildly exceeded expectations, winning more games than they lost and making the playoffs, where they won four straight and came up one game shy of the American League Championship Series, when the magic well finally ran dry.
No White Sox fan could possibly feel let down by this team, but we felt that familiar pang when the end arrived.
As A. Bartlett Giamatti, former baseball commissioner, famously said, “Baseball will break your heart. It is designed to break your heart.”
As does life itself.
How many loves end not with a bang but with a whimper of mutual disappointment? And if enough of our dreams burst like so many soap bubbles, life can seem little more than a case of chronic disappointment.
That may be why we invest so much in rooting for our teams. We want so badly to feel like winners once in a great while. The White Sox won it all in 2005, the Cubs in 2016. Each was beyond wonderful. But winning is the exception that proves the rule. We are veterans of disappointment, and learning to deal with that is how we master the art of living: i.e. managing expectations. Buddhism keeps reminding us that the more attached we are to our expectations, the greater our suffering.
But the cure isn’t living without expectations. To live is to desire, to want, to expect. Learning how to handle the inevitable disappointments, then, is the essential skill.
Some handle it by being ruthlessly competitive in their pursuit of “winning.” But winning at the expense of others is the loneliest feeling in the world. You could call it losing by winning.
Winning together is better, but the team approach depends on others, and what if you let the team down (or vice versa)? Self-disappointment is the worst. Then again, we’re told, if you don’t try, you’ve already failed.
’Tis a puzzlement and a predicament.
One of the world’s best known prayers includes the line, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It goes both ways, and it only works with a healthy dose of forgiveness. Similarly, we must forgive our self-disappointment, as we forgive those who disappoint us. The balance created by those two forgivenesses, Buddhists might say, paves the path to enlightenment.
The opposite of disappointment is not euphoria, which is always short-lived. Disappointment’s opposite is contentment — or better yet, acceptance.
And that gives us our best shot at living a happier life.
Which brings us to Nov. 4, the day after the midterm elections. I hope and pray that Team Democracy is feeling more like the Milwaukee Brewers today.
If not? Well, those Chicago Bears looked awfully good on Monday Night Football …
