disillusioned

most of us have experienced disillusionment. Even if we can’t recall the experience we often hear of someone who says they are disillusioned. Disillusionment can cause devastation. Many who express disillusionment have felt let down by people through some sort of experience. A cheating partner, lover, or a liar can be extremely difficult to get over once the deviance and betrayal is exposed. After the initial shock disillusionment sets in, often leaving the victim almost in a state of total collapse. I have heard of people who claim to be disillusioned by God or the church, or by some institution like marriage, a political party or a social club. Some express disillusionment with men or women. I have even heard of people who claim to be disillusioned with life. These people often feel severely let down and usually they express great pain and discomfort, even torment in their situation.
I love words and the meanings they convey. My mind naturally gravitates to the possible applications of words. I love to know the origins of a word or saying so the concept of disillusionment jumped out at me and I decided to check it out just for fun. I was amazed at what was obvious in the meaning of the word. It changed a lot of things in my mind.
I logged on to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ and typed in “disillusioned”. This is what I got straight off the bat: [To free or deprive of illusion. n. 1. The act of disenchanting. 2. The condition or fact of being disenchanted. adj. having lost one's ideals, illusions, or false ideas about someone or something; disenchanted]
Isn’t that fascinating?
Now to my mind to be enchanted means to be under some sort of spell. In other words to be bewitched. I dug a little bit deeper and found out that the origins of the word comes from Latin meaning: action of mocking, from ‘illudere’ or ‘incantare’- to mock at. All this suggests the action of deceiving, the state or fact of being intellectually deceived or misled, even made a fool of.
To be under an illusion means that one is under the perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature.
So, what pain do we feel when we are disillusioned. The pain of perceived betrayal is very real and hard to bare. But maybe it doesn’t stop there? Could it be that the trauma we experience is the pain we feel being pressed into releasing our own make-believe world? An imaginary world we seem now to have lost as a result of the perceived betrayal? Could it be possible that the pain we experience be that of our being exposed not so much by the ‘perpetrator’ but by our own folly? Perhaps that might be just a little harsh, but it is worthy of serious evaluation.
In short, when we begin to understand the real meaning of the word, disillusionment is, amidst the huge discomfort, a good state to be in. Disillusionment is at least potentially, the start of a process of having the illusions in our lives weeded out and destroyed.
Perhaps we should rejoice when we are disillusioned as it could very well be the beginning of clarity of mind for us pertaining to our thinking and/or our environment.