Is it possible to be disappointed in another person? What do you say?   Has someone ever let you down? Not lived up to your expectations?

Ah, that’s just it, isn’t it?

It’s technically impossible to be disappointed in someone else. Because when someone lets you down it only means that person didn’t live up to your expectations. The person didn’t accomplish what you deemed him or her capable of accomplishing. We are let down in our assessment of the person. In our hope we have for the other person.

We are constantly assessing and judging. We judge our situation. We judge our lives. And we judge other people. We assess them and determine what they are capable of. Then, when they do not live up to our assessment we are disappointed in them. Is it any fault of theirs if they teeter off the pedestal we stuck them on?

The old man looked at the young man barely standing in front of him.  His grandson avoided his eyes and looked intently at the floor.  His posture bent and if it wasn’t for the wall behind him his grandfather was sure he would have collapsed to the floor.

The old banker licked his dry lips.  “I am disappointed in you, son,” he said slowly.

The young man forced a sick grin and for the first time made eye contact.  “Whose fault is that?  I never asked for the burden of being your grandson.”

His grandfather nodded his head.  He was there when his grandson had been born.  He watched him grow from baby to toddler to a busy child to an aloof teenager and finally to a young man.  He had been present for every life event along the way.  But for the first time, he realized he did not know the young man standing in his office.  How could he be around someone for twenty years and find out you are strangers?