the.com/disillusionment
The moment reality mails you a refund for all that misplaced faith.
means The deflating realization that something or someone you believed in isn't as good, true, or trustworthy as you thought.
from Built from 'dis-' (undoing) plus 'illusion,' itself from Latin 'illudere' meaning to mock or play false with — literally 'to play against.' So to be disillusioned is to have the mockery stripped away: the illusion that was quietly laughing at you finally gets switched off. The word itself is a 19th-century coinage, arriving once 'illusion' had settled into its modern sense of a false belief rather than just a trick of the eye.
- not cynicism
- cynicism expects lies, this just survived one
- root clue
- losing an illusion, not gaining despair
- oddly useful
- clears space where a truer belief can fit
- peak age
- often hits hardest right after big promotions