The Dalai Lama isn't simply asking us to accept disappointment with a smile—he's suggesting that our desires often reflect incomplete understanding of what we actually need. A job rejection that stings at thirty might have prevented you from missing your child's childhood, or from meeting the person who later changed your direction entirely. The wisdom lies not in passive resignation but in recognizing that the self making the wish is considerably less informed than the self living with the consequence, and that future-you will sometimes be grateful for present-you's thwarted plans in ways present-you cannot yet imagine.