Appointment and Disappointment

There are days in which I am very disappointed with large chunks of my life.  Which brings up the not unreasonable question, What is disappointment?

Appoint:  To fix or officially set; to name officially; to determine the disposition of by power of appointment.

Disappoint:  To fail to meet the expectation or hope of; to cause disappointment.

When I read this, I was confused.  Typically I think of disappointment as the opposite of appointment - apparently not.  But not so unrelated as I might have thought:  a failure to meet an expectation or hope can include not being officially set or naming officially, perhaps even in the sense of being dis-appointed (un-named or removed) from a position or outcome.

And how does any of this help me actually fix the problem I was hoping to fix?  How do I combat the sense of disappointment that I have?

Perhaps, just perhaps, it starts in the area of appointment.  How did I appoint these expectations of life that I have - or rather, who appointed them?  Are they valid?  If they are, then I can feel legitimately let down by the fact that things have not gone the way I would have wished.  If not, perhaps those were not valid appointments (goals, wishes, thoughts, affirmations) to begin with.

Certainly this extends itself to others' expectations of me.  These are things that others have appointed (officially set, disposed by power of appointment) to me - but again, are these legitimate?  Are they reasonable?  Are they correct?

And if I find myself disappointed in the things that are legitimate and within my power, what do I do about that?  Well, the nice thing about dis-appointing is that you can re-appoint things as well.  So perhaps the better question is this: if disappointed, how do I set or fix things for success?

A final thought:  appointees serve at the pleasure of those that appointed them.  If something turns out to be truly unreasonable, one can simply act - to dis-appoint it from a position of power.