Disappointment

I spent many long hours at an audition yesterday. I was happy with my audition but didn't get the role and now am very bummed. Several of us, including a friend of mine, were up for the same part. The woman who got the part also auditioned well but I don't think that's why she got the role. She just happened to be a friend and colleague of the director.

"That's not fair," says my daughter. The sad, sad truth is that theater is not a meritocracy or a democracy. It's a dictatorship with the director in the role of dictator. I don't like it. It makes me mad, but that's the way it is. It also sounds like awfully bitter sour grapes to go around saying, "I was robbed," but it is how I feel. Sigh.

I know in the grand scheme of things losing out on a coveted role is very small potatoes, kind of like my daughter not having friends in her math class, yet in our little worlds, the disappointment looms large. I've never been very good at wanting things and then not getting them. For many years I gave up on wanting things just as a way to cope.

Of course I really did want things. I was just in denial and pretending that nothing mattered. The truth was that I wanted things very badly but didn't know how to cope with the ferocity of my desire or the devastation wrought by disappointment. I can acknowledge those feelings now, but I sure don't like them. My experience has been that the things I want most are the things I have the least control over, which is just a recipe for disaster.

As a child I wanted my mother to stop drinking, my dad to stop being so critical. I wanted to be loved and to not be fat and I thought those went together. I wanted to be popular and I wanted to do more with my life than just get good grades. As an adult I want our government to work towards using clean energy, to get out of Iraq, and to implement universal health care. I want my daughter to be safe as she ventures further and further out into the world, my husband to be safe when riding his bike. I want to get the roles I want in plays I want to be in and I want an agent to sign me as a client and to sell my book to a publisher to a wildly successfully reception by the public.

All that desire yet the outcome is out of my hands. That's why the Buddhists say life is suffering and why I work to surf the wave of my feelings so I won't drown in their deep waters. I'll do the little bit I can to keep my family safe, to vote for the government I want, to find an agent, to get cast in a role. The rest of the time I'll count my blessings and hope for the best. That's the way I've learned to cope. I don't really know what else to do.