Coping with Disapointment

I was about seven when, in my best handwriting, I sent a postcard to the BBC's Uncle Mac requesting that he play a record for me on Children's Favourites. I then sat expectantly by the radio every Saturday morning for at least two weeks. But he completely ignored my request and left me deflated, disillusioned and out of pocket (on account of the postage stamp). It was my first conscious realisation that life could be a little disappointing - an experience which was soon to be reaffirmed by a series of similar events: like the revelation that my best friend had another best friend; Santa's failure to bring me the bike I thought I deserved and the discovery that there was a bigger school to go to once I had left the small one.

But to speak of shattered dreams or psychological traumas would be to exaggerate the significance of these setbacks: they may have been heartbreaking at the time but they served as an introduction to what was to come. They were the vanguard of life's tribulations and, if I were to survive the onslaught, I would need to wipe my snivelling nose, pull up my socks and prepare myself for some proper, grown-up disappointments. Despite this early mental preparation, however, I continued to experience feelings of dejection - such as when my exam results were poor, my hopes of becoming a rock-star were unfulfilled or my letters to The Times went unpublished. And so it eventually became clear that I ought to adopt one or more of the 'coping mechanisms' which I had begun to identify in human behavioural patterns.

Stoicism - indifference to pleasure or pain - is one of them: it works rather like the "force-fields" which sci-fi writers find so useful except that, in this context, it shields one from the possibility of emotional upset. The price of stoicism, however, is a tendency to stolidity - a morbid condition which is often found in dangerous sociopaths. This is an unattractive trait

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Cynicism – the expectation that things will turn out badly - is a useful mechanism but here again there is a downside: pessimism soon becomes the default setting of cynics - and pessimistic people are not fun to be around.

Fatalism could also be used effectively as a 'coping mechanism': it requires one merely to submit to the inevitability of predetermination, thereby removing any sense of expectation. Attractive? Maybe - yet where is joy to be found in such a submissive doctrine? Where are the highs and lows of pleasure and pain, happiness and misery?

So how am I equipped to cope with my latest little disappointment? Earlier this year, when spring crept over the horizon, I got a little carried away with Nature's revival and decided to join in. I bought a beehut - a kind of nesting box for solitary bees - and installed it on the balcony in the optimum, south-west facing position. Bees, I had heard, were having a hard time and needed some help with suitable accommodation. Well now Autumn has come and the lavishly appointed beehut remains vacant. Disappointed is putting it mildly.

But, not wanting to waste the emotional and financial investment, I have decided to try for a tenant again next spring (assuming there will be some bees out there). Yesterday I brought the hut inside for refurbishment. Maybe I will paint the roof in a brighter colour, freshen the threshold and make it more welcoming. Putting up a 'vacant' sign, I know, will not work because bees can’t read but I could try surrounding it with colourful, flowering potted plants which may attract them.

Meanwhile I just hope there is some solitary bee out there who has spent the summer in an inferior hut, or sheltering miserably in some squalid, makeshift squat, regretting that they did not take up my generous offer.