Last Minute Cancellation

Here’s a thing I need to work on dealing with: When people cancel plans last minute.

It happens. It’s a part of life. It’s also a part of life that I find difficult to deal with. And it may seem like a very small thing (which it is) but we often have big emotions as a result of seemingly small things, and these are as important to address as the big things.

Let’s set the scene. We’ve planned to meet for coffee or something similar at a certain time on a certain day. Typically when I make plans with someone I set aside a big chunk of day to allow for improvisation and adventure (for example, yesterday I met a friend for coffee which evolved into pints). What this means, essentially, is that if I have planned to meet someone, I have set aside an entire day because I consider someone choosing to spend time to be quite a precious and important thing. It’s no small thing to choose to spend any of your limited time with anyone.

But in reality, life happens. Thing come up. Plans have to be cancelled last minute sometimes. I’ve done it myself. I try not to do it haphazardly because I know how it makes me feel when it’s done to me. But it does happen, and that’s par for the course.

When plans are cancelled last minute, in particular plans I’ve been looking forward to, I feel disappointment, frustration, stress. I also feel less confident, my self-esteem drops. Overthinking introduces itself. I question whether I’ve done something wrong. I question the authenticity of the reason plans were cancelled. In summary, I feel hurt, and this hurt is often so strong that it will ruin the rest of my day.

And this is no one else’s responsibility to address. This is my problem to solve. Because plans to get cancelled and we need to be able to deal with the disappointment of that. And maybe it’s surprising to hear that a man feels such things in these situations. But we do, we just may not always be able to express them because we feel embarrassed and vulnerable for feeling it.

Our world sometimes feels apathetic. It feels like people don’t fully take into consideration the emotional landscape of other people. We serve the self, and in doing so, we may indirectly hurt other people. The focus on the self in this era results in us caring less about the people around us, and I don’t think that’s an extraordinarily good development.

I suppose I just wanted to talk about something that comes as a challenge to me today, because I don’t wish to portray a version of myself that is unaffected. Things do get to me – they get to all of us, and sometimes you just need to get it off your chest in order to move through it.