In a nutshell…
This year, I learned to sit with discomfort. To look at discomfort in the eye and say, “I know you are there, but I won’t be you”.
When I was younger, it was very easy for me to become my discomfort. It mostly stemmed from things I could not control, or tried to control but did not end up going my way.
Missing or misplaced items, people being late, being late myself, the day before my flight back to a foreign land away from my family, the rain when I don’t have my umbrella with me, not seeing signs of my bus coming despite Google Maps saying it should be there “Now”, unexpected fire drills in my university dorm.
That lump in the throat. When your chest feels like it could explode anytime. When you want to scream at the top of your lungs.
I had always run away from it — like watching horror movies only to close my eyes and ears for the most part. Avoiding life’s jumpscares. With no surprises, I wanted my path to be expected, coddled in the comfort of the simplicity of pre-determined life formulas.
As if life can be consolidated into one single law: like Newton’s Third Law of Motion. Action = reaction. Input = output. That equal sign is my comfort. My anchor. As long as I follow the equation, I am secure. I am safe.
No spoiler alerts are needed, but we all know life does not work that way. Why would we live, anyway, if everything becomes expected? If all outcomes are guaranteed by some sort of law, why would this universe need complex and often contradictive and hypocritical beings like us humans? The aberrations we create that defy what could be some consistent, replicable human equation, the very thing that creates those jumpscares and plot twists, are at the end of the day what made life a little more worth living.
Inconsistent as we are, unexpected as most things are in life, aren’t these worth celebrating too?
As a recovering people-pleaser, this very inconsistency of human nature helped me make peace with the fact that people-pleasing is a useless pursuit. In an end-of-year dinner with some friends, we went around and shared what we took away from the year 2023.
I had my answer ready (thanks to the many shower thoughts I had):
Sometimes we get disappointed, sometimes we disappoint others. And that is just how life is.
(I have to credit my dad for the above — he gave this advice to me at one point this year, in Indonesian, “Kadang kita dikecewain, kadang kita ngecewain orang lain. Itu hal biasa.”)
There are days when someone disappoints you. Friends, families — the closest people in our life that we care about and trust.
There are days when you become that someone to other people. You disappoint others. Not because you deliberately want to disappoint them, but because sometimes when you are being yourself, you may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Disappointment is such a sad feeling. You can only get disappointed by those you care about, by those you hang expectations on. And getting disappointed usually renders even anger unimportant. It is just like a wave of sadness that pierces through the heart and a loud sigh you let out to release the pressure in the chest.
I often call it an “unfortunate situation”. I don’t think we actively want to disappoint those we care about. But alas, the outcome could not have been different.
“Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about it.” ; “I cannot choose another option because if I do choose the other one, that is not me — that is just me fitting into your mould, and I know you also cannot choose an option that would satisfy my cup of tea too.” ; “I am afraid, it is what it is.”
P.S. It is not to be confused with the selfishness of not caring for anything else in the world and going about your life haphazardly. And not to be confused with the lack of compromise, because I do think in many ways we do need that in life, especially with people we want to keep in our lives.
Sometimes people disappoint me, sometimes I disappoint people. It is humanising.
And so, I let go.
I let go of so much. So much more than I ever had before.
I let go of the need to set things straight when disappointment hits. I learned to accept and find ways to live with it. I learned that there is no way I can make everyone in my life happy with all of my decisions. If I do ever so slightly attempt to get to that territory, I would lose myself. I would be a cup of very, very boring tea.
And to that, as I am writing this entry, I look back on the milestones, the plot twists, and the detours that made my 2023 the way it is, that made my view of disappointment what it is now.
For all the disappointment I feel, or may have caused, I thank them for letting me walk a little lighter and smile a little brighter.
Happy New Year in advance folks.
