Change and Disappointment - What I Learned

I am a highly idealistic person who has high expectations for others. When dealing with people, I often filter out those who I believe is no good for my life. After this filtering process, I am left with two groups of people. First, the few people I absolutely admire since I believe they are better than me in every single possible way. Second, the majority of nice people who can help me out and share happiness with me.

I am always too scared to contact the few people in the first group that I almost ‘worship’. But as a challenge for myself, I recently contacted one of the people who I admired: let me just call him George. I had a Zoom conversation with him and I expected to gain a lot of inspiration from him and I had no doubt the call will end happily.

Instead, this call completely crushed my idealism and high expectations for others.

Let me introduce George. I met him at my school about a year ago and he was the one who started talking to me. I was so impressed by his outgoingness and confidence and thought, “What a great guy.” I met him again and he taught me how to do a forehand frisbee throw. Even though we only talked to each other 2 times before this Zoom call, he made such an amazing impression on me and I always wished to talk to him again. He also has an amazing YouTube channel and he has a strong passion for filmmaking and photography. Since he is older than me and was going to university, I thought I could kind of talk to him about his university experience and get some inspiration out of him. Also, since I make content online as well, I thought I could relate to him a little.

(At this point, if you know who ‘George’ is that I am referring to in this article, please don’t contact him. If I ever get the chance, I want to share this article with him in person, not through someone else. I am in no way trying to criticize him or make fun of him. Also, if you are ‘George’ by any chance, you definitely know that I am talking about you. These are honest thoughts of our Zoom call and I hope you accept me for my thoughts. Please contact me and let me know what you think about the article.)

So I hop on the Zoom call. We just quickly talk about how things are going on each other’s ends. I am pretty nervous, but I could talk decently. George was pretty laid back and calm and answered all the questions I had. Overall, the meeting wasn’t bad and the purpose of talking and sharing information was achieved.

But after the call, I was disappointed. George wasn’t as outgoing and confident as I remember from when I met him for the first time. He wasn’t smiling as much as the day he taught me frisbee. Overall, I felt as if all the qualities that I admired of him were non-existent in that call.

The first question I asked myself is, “Whose fault is this? Is it my fault? Did I say anything bad? Or is it his fault? Did he change? Was he purposefully not showing his outgoingness and his smile? I was shocked by how the meeting with someone I admired left me disappointed and unsatisfied.

Post-call

My reflection brain kicked in.

First, I knew that my disappointment wasn’t George’s fault. People change all the time and other people cannot control that. It is possible that he was just uncomfortable showing his traits of confidence and outgoingness to me. When I think of myself, I deal with different people in different ways as well. Or, there could be other factors that played a role. Maybe it was the non-physical Zoom call that prevented him from showing his outgoingness. Maybe it was the fact that I talked to him after about a year. Maybe he was having a bad day. Or maybe, it was just that he didn’t know me well enough and wasn’t engaged enough in the conversation, right? Even I wouldn’t have much to say when talking to a person I barely know. How can George himself be at fault for that?

Then I thought of myself. Did I expect him to be outgoing? Definitely. Did I expect him to smile more? Definitely could have made me happier. Did I expect him to ask me a ton of unnecessary questions to show his interest in having a conversation with me? For sure.

I realized that it was these expectations that were the things that were making me disappointed. But what can I do about it? What can I learn from this experience to prevent future disappointments?

My takeaways

Some things change. People will act differently after some time or based on different situations. I have to stop having high expectations of other people, magically thinking that he/she will fit a certain personality trait the next time I meet him.

On the other hand, some things don’t change. Remember how I mentioned how I admired George’s attitude and passion for photography and making videos? That didn’t change. George’s YouTube channel is growing and I could feel his passion when I talked to him over Zoom.

Did this call fade my admiration for George? Absolutely not. Even if he didn’t act in a certain way in front of me doesn’t mean I can ignore all the traits he has that I admire him for.

From now on, I want to focus on trying to understand what are some things that could change vs (probably) won’t change. In other words, I want to be able to have a rough idea of what another person values significantly vs things that are less significant and/or things that can easily change based on the situation (like a person’s tone or attitude).

Though this lesson I learned might be extremely simple, I think it can have a big positive influence on my future relationships and I also think others can apply this lesson as well. In a way, everyone experiences this often because people around them change. But when there is a change that is so significant (especially for someone you admire or care for a lot), I think people pay a lot of attention to it and become emotional (just like I did).

I talked about the whole situation to my mom and she elaborated on my thoughts. In Japan, there are events called 同窓会 (dosokai) where people from the same middle school class, high school class, or even university class meet up after 10 years or so after graduating. Basically, it is an event where you get surprised how your ex-crush got married to your ex-best friend or how the quietest kid became a rockstar. There is such a big difference from what you expected and you might feel a whole range of emotions at the event. I feel like the Zoom call with George was a kind of mini-dosokai, where I met him after a while and experienced a little shock.

I am glad to learn from this so that I can improve my relationships with others in the future. In addition to having realistic expectations on my end, I think the lesson I learned could help the person I am interacting with as well. For example, when investing in a meaningful relationship (e.g. romantic partner, close friend), I want to make sure I convey things that matter to me vs things that matter less and things that could change over time. I think this helps others have realistic expectations for me and I could avoid going through a lot of “You were so much better back then” type of drama.

I think another gain from this call is the attitude of “trying even though you might fail”. This connects to the simple idea of “learning from failure”. I think many people force themselves to do difficult things just for the sake of being brave and not feeling weak. But when I think about it, I can always learn something even if I fail (how else will I be writing this long blog then?). This Zoom call has served as a practical example for the simple and obvious lesson that you should try different things because you can learn from them even if you fail.

Overall, I am not a crazy confident person, but I feel like I am less scared to approach things. In a way, I get excited about what I might learn from the experience.

In conclusion, I want to thank George for all the inspiration and the lessons I have learned from talking to him (yes, I didn’t know what else to say as a conclusion). I want to keep improving myself and follow in his footsteps.