The Invitation of Disillusionment
When I was young, my parents told me the Tooth Fairy was real.
It led me to believe I lived in a magical world, one filled with fairies and some form of strange, twisted economy whereby my teeth could be purchased without my consent, but only in the dead of night. It was an illusion created and birthed unto me, regardless of my desire for it, designed to be discarded with age.
And when the moment of disillusionment came and I awoke to find my dad not-so-sneakily trying to make the extraction from underneath my head-covered pillow, I was ready to let this fairly harmless illusion go.
❗ But not all illusions we hold are harmless; in fact, most of them are inherently dangerous because they alter the ways we perceive reality.
Parker Palmer speaks to the nature of illusions in his book, The Active Life:
“There is the experience we commonly call disillusionment, when a trusted friend lets us down, an institution we had relied on fails us, a vision we had believed in turns out to be a hoax, or—worst of all—when we discover ourselves to be less than we had thought. Many of us try hard to avoid such experiences, and when we are in the midst of them we go through a kind of dying.
But the very name we give these moments tells us that something positive is happening through our pain. We say we are being “dis-illusioned.” That is, we are being stripped of some illusions about life, about others, about ourselves. As our illusions are removed, like barriers on a road, we have a chance to take that road farther toward truth.
Instead of commiserating and offering a shoulder to cry on when a friend says that he or she [or they] is disillusioned, we ought to congratulate, celebrate, and ask the friend how we can help the process go deeper still.”
This week, I invite you to reflect on the illusions you have given yourself to throughout your life. These might include:
personal illusions about your own sense of worth or value,
communal illusions crafted by a faith community or workplace,
societal illusions such as meritocracy or racial/gender supremacy,
or perhaps silly little illusions with no discernible long-term impact (like my example of the tooth fairy).
Below are some questions to help guide your inner work.
📝 Questions:
What is one illusion you’ve experienced at each of the personal, communal, and societal levels? If these are past illusions, what did the process of disillusionment feel like in your body?
In what ways have illusions helped to protect you and/or maintain a stabilized sense of self and worldview?
🧰 Resources:
The Active Life by Parker Palmer (book)
“Living from the Inside Out” (video)
More about Parker Palmer (teacher profile)
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