Dis-Illusionment

Disappointment is what we want to avoid at all costs. Nobody wants to be disappointed. And entire consumer sectors have developed around it, glossing over disappointments and comforting us with confirmation. You can even insure yourself against disappointment, because disappointment is a loss. A negative experience and a failure that shouldn’t have happened to us.

But the word itself means something entirely different: dis-illusionment. The end of the illusion. That’s not a negative experience at all. It’s the only way to destroy an illusion with truth.

Why am I writing this? For years I sold something that may have been based on an illusion. A bracelet called Power Balance, and because it had a hologram in it, the name was the promise. Wearing a bracelet with the hologram would immediately give you more power and balance. This wasn’t a conscious lie but a collective agreement not to question it further. Of course many people did question it, but they were silenced by a simple test you could feel on your own body. The customers wanted to believe too, because they desperately craved something that would give them more strength, balance and energy. And we wanted to sell. Both sides had an interest in keeping the illusion intact. And it held. For a long time.

Who buys something like that? Everyone. Without exception. Athletes, managers, people with physical complaints like back pain. Many people are exhausted and wanted something that helps. Everyone wanted to believe. Everyone wanted to finally get something that helps and that they could simply wear on their wrist.

That’s not stupid, it’s human, and our customers weren’t stupid either. They’re like every person, searching for things that make them stronger and healthier. We all wanted it to work. And when someone puts something in your hand and says this will help, we want to believe it. Not because we’re naive. But because the desire for something that works is stronger than the desire for truth.

Of course I wanted to believe it myself, and I’ve already emphasized in other essays how much I wished it would work. Because the contradiction would have stopped: it works, people feel it, science will catch up eventually.

The problem was: science didn’t catch up.

The dis-illusionment came slowly. It wasn’t a single eureka moment but a creeping development that stripped away hope layer by layer. And we slowly became aware that a happy ending was receding further and further into the distance. Sobering on every level.

Many learned how high the price is for not being disillusioned at all costs. It’s not the money we pay when we buy things that don’t deliver what they promise. It’s more the time we invest in maintaining an illusion that must eventually collapse. But above all it’s the self-respect, when we defend things we no longer believe in ourselves. That cuts especially deep.

All of that is the price of keeping the illusion alive and convincing each other that what we tell ourselves is true.

Of course this doesn’t just apply to bracelets with holograms. It applies to so many things, starting with jobs we know don’t make us happy, or relationships where no honest word has been exchanged in a long time. It applies at every scale. Including political convictions we no longer examine because ideologies promise us more than the hard reality of our shared struggle for survival.

Everywhere we pay a price for not being disillusioned. And everywhere, dis-illusionment would be the better path. Because it only hurts once. But maintaining the illusion costs too much energy every day, and once that energy runs out, it doesn’t come back. That’s deep disappointment, which we then call trauma.

I carried the lie of that time inside me. Not as some grand conspiracy, but as the maintenance of an everyday agreement that self-deception is the better deal. But it crumbled. And the process of letting go was only complete when I was ready to see the word dis-illusionment not as a loss, but as what it is: the only way out.

I’m convinced that real change is only possible through dis-illusionment. It’s uncomfortable and it hurts. And even though nobody wants to hear it, we have a choice every day: we can keep paying not to be disillusioned. Or we can pay the price once and see more clearly afterwards. At some point I paid. Not because I wanted to, but because at some point I couldn’t do anything else. So I paid. And it was worth it.