Zebras love onions

“Mom, the zebra ate three apples out of my hand!” My son’s excited voice came over the telephone, hardly pausing for breath. “And when we ran out of apples, I gave it an onion. It loved it! It ate the whole thing!”

I was calling my son from Chicago where I was attending a conference. He was at a bush break in South Africa, where we live. My husband had taken the two boys to a game farm close to Bela Bela in Limpopo, South Africa. We had tried to get them to come with me to Chicago for a mini holiday but couldn’t organise the paperwork in time. We were very disappointed, because this would be the first time we would be able to go overseas as a family. They had been swimming in the river, playing with mud and (evidently) feeding zebras by hand. My son laughingly told me that they named the zebra “Spot”.

I was proud of how they handled the disappointment. We know that disappointment is a fact of life. We don’t always get what we want, how we want it or when we want it. And the way that we deal with it, can make life harder. It made me consider again that our mindset is critical in how we deal with disappointment. The way we think can either close us into frustration and regret or open us up for new experiences. Well, I didn’t know that zebras loved onions. Who knew? But isn’t it amazing to know? And even more amazing, if they had decided to mope at home, we would never learn this amazing piece of information.

Here’s a couple of lessons that I learned about how to deal with disappointment.

Face it head on. Feeling disappointed is horrible. But if you try to dull the pain by ignoring it, it might take longer to work through. Face the pain, really feel the emotion, no matter how much it sucks. Allow it to overwhelm you – for a while. Shed a tear, rage at the sky, scream and shout. Let it all out.
Emotion is just information. Our emotions might feel really strong. But if you reframe them as information, it might make it easier to deal with. Ask yourself what information the emotion is trying to tell you. What is the data saying?
Look for the lesson. Learning from experiences doesn’t happen automatically. I know that there have been many experiences that I didn’t necessarily learn from. Benjamin Franklin said that experience is a dear teacher. “Dear” in this sentence means “expensive” – if we don’t learn from experience, we pay a high price. Really reflect on the disappointment. What can you learn from it? Take the time to think it through and write it down. Only by writing it down can you make it real.
Let it go. Hanging on to disappointment can have long-term consequences. It festers like an untreated wound and infects other positive experiences. You need to let it go. Even if you don’t like it. And especially if you don’t want to. Letting it go is a conscious decision. I have found that a symbolic gesture is useful – write the disappointment on a piece of paper and tear it into small pieces. Throw it on a fire or scatter it from a mountaintop. But let it go.

The bad news is that disappointment never really gets easier. But these steps might help you to deal with it better and be open to new experiences.

I wonder what else zebras might eat…