I’m not sure which feels worse: being rejected or the pain of watching your child be rejected. Whether it’s rejected by a friend, seminary or yeshiva, a shidduch, a job or a part in the school play, it hurts.
What’s strange though is that the intensity of feeling rejected over something changes and not everyone is bothered in the same way about the same kind of rejection. We may even project onto our children what we would be feeling if the same thing happened to us, yet that might not have even occurred to your child.
So what accounts for a difference in experience?
What we think about being rejected. What we make it mean about ourselves. How personally we take it.
So it’s not the thing that rejected us (the date, the school, the boss) that creates our experience. It’s our thinking about it. And hey, I’m fine with thinking it hurts. Disappointment is the most natural human reaction. Nothing wrong with feeling that.
Because underneath all thoughts and feelings is a resilience that we all possess to be able to handle life and bounce back and become stronger (unless we innocently think we aren’t resilient or can’t bounce back…but that too is a thought created experience).
I am constantly amazed at how many people are plagued by feelings of inadequacy. Although it is the most normal of human experiences, it is NOT the truth.
