Disappointment, Part 1

How we handle disappointments tells a lot about a person, doesn’t it? While it’s only natural and healthy to avoid them at all costs, disappointments are a part of life, and actually (if we’re lucky) we’ll have plenty of time to rack up quite a few of them before our days are over. The trick is really to learn how to deal with them in healthy and positive ways, because eluding them altogether is nigh on impossible. That being said, I’m still reeling from a whopper of a blow this week myself and while I dealt with it rather gracefully and matter-of-factly at the time (or so I thought), it is dawning on me that I have a bit of emotional work left to do before I bury the thing.

There’s some background involved here to set the stage … how far back do you want to go?! It involves loving nature and living the simple life … two threads that have been tightly woven in the fabric of my life since I was a little girl. They grew stronger when I met my husband in high school, and in the last 40 years together they have solidified into a lifestyle that you can read about on our innkeepers page (http://www.ilovethelodge.com/innkeepers/index.php), so I won’t bore you with repetition. Our 6-and-counting years as innkeepers of an upscale hotel here in the White Mountains have complicated this a bit, but our little log cabin getaway up on the mountain has kept the embers of the ‘simple’ lifestyle fanned, and the coals are glowing! Tumbleweed’s Jay Shafer and his Tiny House, which arrived here at The Lodge in July, have fanned the flames more than a bit. Every day I promote Jay and his tiny living lifestyle to folks who want to see it, buy his plans and build a tiny house of their own. It has inspired me to write about my current one-year simple living experiment called the “Year of Living Frugally”. A few weeks ago, at the suggestion of my best friend who recommended it highly, we started watching Ken Burns’ National Parks series, which was made for PBS. It’s not new … ‘been around for awhile, only we’re just now finally getting around to seeing it. It is fabulous! It re-introduced me to my old friend John Muir, but in a totally new way: NOT as the rough and scruffy, white bearded old man I’ve been reading about for years, but as a 24-year old Scottish outdoor adventurer and poet, who changed the way we think and feel about nature! And that is the lead-in to my ‘no good, very bad horrible day’ that led me to me big disappointment.  But that is a story for tomorrow’s blog!