Opportunities are still open, so don’t feel bummed

I wrote yesterday about how I didn’t place in a science competition. Today, I’ll write about me getting over that disappointing low in my week. After the science competition on Saturday, I came home around 8 PM. The fair took the entire day; I was exhausted and disappointed. Not a good combination. Plus, I was feeling that numbness of shock over disappointment. I think all those symptoms qualify for being bummed out.

I didn’t want people’s pity, though. What can you get from pity? If some one feels sorry for you, they look at you as if you are poor (not in the literal sense). Am I really poor? I hope not. People’s pity, however, will sometimes make me feel poor; that I really am that poor person who needs pity from others. No. I don’t need it. I can be strong enough to get over disappointment by myself. I can be strong enough to look towards the future for opportunities. I am strong enough to learn from my mistakes and do better next time. So no, pity is not for me.

However, I did need some time alone to get over a day of fruitless competition. The awards ceremony kept on replaying itself over in my head, as if it was a horror movie. My memory is great at remembering the most frightening moments in a movie, and it sometimes even exaggerates details to make the scene all the more frightening. I guess this was what was happening with the awards ceremony. Maybe I, against my will, felt that the ceremony felt like a nightmare. So I did try to block out the scenes and meditate on a happier memory.  I’m terrible at focusing my mind, so I constantly wandered back to my predicament–back to the disappointment. It wasn’t a great feeling. I can’t quite describe what I felt, but it felt bad. Not pain though.

But I think that disappointment was needed; I needed what happened to really sink in and let itself reside permanently in some little space in my mind. I needed it there to remind me of what mistake I made and how I could improve. So the next day, when I woke up, even though I was still feeling bummed, I could start looking at the brighter side of things.

Today, when I went to school, I felt less than stellar, but there was no point skipping a day of school over disappointment. So I went to school and actually felt much better by the end of the day. Everything was still the same. I took all my classes and I did fine. Plus, I remembered that the next competition I will be participating in can be a great experience if I prepare myself for it. Even if from the next competition, if I place, I won’t be going to a international competition, I can still have the opportunity to run in a national competition and earn great prizes. There are still opportunities–maybe even better opportunities.

No one can always succeed. After all, winning would lose its value if everyone could win. But any experience is a learning experience. So take a defeat as a memorable experience and the next time, grow even better with that under your belt. As Billie said in Meet the Robinsons, “From failing you learn. From success, not so much.”