Illusions & Appointments

When we speak of disappointments, we sometimes forget about what that really means. The implicit appointments of which we speak are not the appointments to rank or office, or the meetings we arrange with others, or the legal designations of power and status. Rather, we speak of furnishings and embellishments, for these are what appointments are in the context of disappointments. A disappointment is the stripping away of something which we had used to furnish our emotional house, the rooms of our dreams and aspirations. We rarely use that phrase 'luxuriously appointed', but in such a context, 'disappointment' would refer to the removal of such luxury, and the reduction of our rich imaginings to drab reality.

In like vein, we occasionally forget that disillusionment is often positive, regardless of our religious or philosophical leanings. When Niels Bohr was asked what the complementary inverse of Reality (Warheit, 'truth') was, he replied, "Clarity (Klarheit)." He meant that the more we seek reality, the less clear things become (1, 2). To be disillusioned is to be reft of one's illusions, to somehow enter a state of clarity without forsaking reality. This is a difficult trick; it is as difficult to be disappointed of one's appointments without being disappointed in the wrong way.

And so we return to the iron city of Dis. Somehow, we must be disillusioned of the glamours and fakes which surround us, but not be stripped of imagination and the power of creation. Somehow we must be disappointed without losing heart, without taking the loss of prettiness as a loss of self. Somehow, we must be able to absorb 'dis' without succumbing to Dis.

I take heart from the encouragement I have received from those whom God has given to me for friendship and support. I am heartened, which is the same thing, but made simpler. I am enjoyed, made more joyful; I am enabled, made more able. And through all these great gifts of God, I gain and am renewed.