“Lessons on disappointment”–Daily Metta

September 26:

“There is no word ‘disappointment’ in my dictionary.”

–Gandhi (Day to Day with Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 4)

“Swaraj in one year!” This was the cry that Gandhi used to ignite non-cooperation in 1921; however, Independence did not take place that year, nor for another 26, to be precise! Someone came to Gandhi and asked him if his hopes were dashed when non-cooperation did not “succeed” according to his plan. That’s when he quipped, “there is no word ‘disappointment’ in my dictionary.” He knew that such a plan was ambitious as it would require that everyone participate and give everything they had to the movement, including a total boycott of British goods and all colonial honors and institutions. Sounds easy at a mass level, right? Just kidding…

His point in making such a bold claim was to show people that there is nothing stopping them from Independence but themselves, their cooperation with and entanglement in a system set up to keep them disempowered. Gandhi was never unclear about what kind of commitment Independence through nonviolence would take. And really, from a rhetorical standpoint, does “Swaraj in thirty years” really galvanize a person to action in the same way?

But there is another lesson we can take from Gandhi’s claim, that is the wide view of life and life’s events that lie behind it. The feeling of disappointment is natural when we want something dearly and feel that we have lost it. But Gandhi is suggesting that we can go beyond that feeling: We can try to see a situation for what it really is, not for how we want it to be. This does not mean that we do not entertain and even encourage high ideals and hopes, but we are always aware that the outcomes of our dreams and actions are not really ever in our hands. In the Gita’s view of human action, which he so perfectly illustrated, “you are not the doer.” Ours is the effort, not the result; we’re expected to control only what we can control, which is our own state of mind.

This is why security is always an “inside” job. As the Gita says, “when you are not affected by pleasure and pain, praise and blame, gain and loss, your are a real yogi” — one whose security cannot be lessened, to whom disappointment is a total stranger.