Navigating Hope and Disappointment

Hope and disappointment seem to go hand and hand, cyclical, one leads to the other.

Which one do you focus on? 

Do you allow both to be present?

Intense situations can be emotionally charged, there is a lot of communication going on.  Can you listen to all the communication? 

When I was surviving in Patagonia alone, I faced a regular pattern around hope and disappointment. That was with fishing, even before I cast my line I had to find bait. I was so hopeful turning over each rock, maybe I’d find worms, grubs, and other insects that I could use for bait. All that hope would fill my chest with anticipation. When I turned over the rock and there was nothing there, that hope would sink down and a heaviness of disappointment would replace it.  But I couldn't give up, I wouldn't give up.  So I paused, felt the disappointment, then I took a deep breath and on the exhale I did my best to blow the disappointment out, and allow the hope to creep back up. Turning over the next rock, feeling the hope filling my chest, and then the disappointment of finding nothing I could use for bait. This would repeat, until I found bait, or the disappointment got so heavy that I couldn't feel the hope anymore. I felt defeated before I even turned over a rock. Sometimes I kept trying with that defeated feeling, and other times I couldn't take it any longer and stopped looking. 

Once I had bait then the hope and disappointment cycle moved to the actual fishing. I was hopeful that the spot I was fishing was a good spot, I was hopeful that the time of day was good. I tried all different times, locations, and ways of fishing. The hope was always highest at the beginning. After each cast and then reeling the line back in without a fish I had to choose between the hope and the disappointment, which one was I going to focus on? Both were real, and both were present, but if I allowed the disappointment to take over then I felt defeated before I even began. Like with searching for bait, when I didn't catch a fish I felt the heavy disappointment and hunger pains in my stomach. I would exhale, breathing out the disappointment. Then take a breath, connect inwards to my need for a fish for food, my desire, my hope and cast the line back out into the lake. 

What was the hope and disappointment communicating? The hope was communicating my need, and desire to eat a sustaining meal that day, and also how that linked to me being able to stay there alone in patagonia until I was ready to leave. The disappointment was communicating to me how challenging it had been to catch fish, and that I had a high need for the fish. If I didn't need or want to catch a fish the disappointment wouldn't be there, or wouldn't be so high. So in an inverse way, the disappointment was also communicating to me my hope, my desire. Maybe that is why hope and disappointment are linked. You can’t really have one without the other.

So how do I handle the cycle between hope and disappointment?

I try to acknowledge that both exist, to feel what is present, seek to understand what it is communicating to me, and then choose what I want to focus on.