This is http://www.essayz.com/a9004041.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %COPE DISSATISFACTION DIFFERENCE EXPECTED REALITY 900404 Our level of satisfaction in life is rooted in how we cope with dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction pertains to differences between expectations and experienced reality. Where the differences are great we are likely to be dissatisfied, unless there is a sense that the difference is welcomed. It is unwelcomed differences which we take as occasions for dissatisfaction. Our hopes, anticipations, expectations and essential needs set the stage for our potential satisfactions, fulfillments and dissatisfactions. We play a role in setting the stage for our own drama. If our role is one in which we thoughtlessly set ourselves up for disappointment, then we are unlikely to be ready to cope with the disappointments for which we thoughtlessly set ourselves up. Part of coping with dissatisfaction is adopting attitudes and developing a spiritual life which do not thoughtlessly set us up for dissatisfaction. Our actual experiences are in part determined by what happens around us, and over which we cannot exercise control. Our actual experiences are not fully determined by what happens around us. Our actual experiences depend upon how we respond to what happens around us; in part because of how we set our stage in anticipation, and in part due to our choices in the face of events around us. How we respond to events around us depends largely upon our paradigm, our world view, our spiritual life; our most fundamental assumptions, attitudes, values and ideals. Through them we set our stage for the drama of our life, even before the events around us come to pass. How we respond to the events around us depends upon how we have set our stage upon which the events occur in our lives. We cannot control the events which occur around us. We can set our stage upon which such events will occur; and we can set our stage so that whenever events occur we will be prepared to respond creatively and victoriously. It is our responsibility to set our spiritual stage with an integrative set of attitudes. If we do not do so, we suffer the consequences of our failure to properly set the stage for our lives. If we are imprudent we may set our stage with cultivated desires and pseudo-needs which set us up for disappointment. If we are dishonest with ourselves and each other about what is possible, and we expect to enjoy impossible events; and we will be dissatisfied when the impossible events do not occur. Dishonest expectations lead to dissatisfaction with which we cannot cope in any meaningful way; apart from giving up our dishonesty. Our expectations and anticipations are our own conceptions; we give them birth. We will do well to take care in giving birth to dishonest expectations and anticipations. We will be dissatisfied fools if we expect more of ourselves and/or others than can honestly be taken seriously. To avoid dissatisfying dishonest expectations and anticipations, we need to develop a paradigm within which we reflect upon our past, present, and possible future in prayer, meditation, serenity, tranquility, relaxation, evaluation, assessment, etc. In times of such reflection we need to seek the truth about our selves, our experiences, our attitudes, our expectations, etc. Being true to ourselves means being truthful about our own experiences and perceptions, and about our role in setting the stage for our experiences and our perceptions of the events which occur around us. We are not helped by our finding fault and making use of scape goats to blame for our dissatisfactions; especially when it is we who set the stage for our dissatisfactions. Our experiences depend upon how we respond to objective events around us, to other people's responses to our responses, and how we respond to each other in strange loops which are reflexive in infinite ways beyond objective understanding and/or control. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================