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When Life Hands Us Disappointments
(10 minute read)
Key Takeaways:
- Disappointments are inevitable—but they are not final. Life will glitch. The question isn’t if, but how we respond when it does.
- Freedom begins with awareness. Like Neo’s choice, we can remain asleep inside our narratives—or wake up and examine what is real.
- Critical thinking is not indoctrination—it’s liberation. Learning to question assumptions, tolerate differing views, and know ourselves more deeply is the red pill.
“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” –Morpheus, The Matrix, 1999
Early in my university teaching career, I developed an honors course built around The Matrix trilogy: Science, Religion, and Philosophy in The Matrix.
The course explored big questions—knowledge, reality, consciousness, freedom, fate, good and evil, faith, enlightenment, and the meaning of existence. The film wasn’t the destination. It was the doorway.
On the first day of class, I told students this would be a safe space for self-exploration. I taught at three liberal arts institutions. And by the way, “know thyself” has been the cornerstone of liberal education for centuries. That’s what the liberal arts are for.
Because knowledge is freedom and freedom begins with knowing yourself.
Knowing yourself involves:
- Understanding how our mind develops
- Examining why we think the way we do
- Identifying our strengths and weaknesses
- Learning to make better decisions
- Using reason first and emotion second in the decision-making process
Of course, critics call this “liberal indoctrination.”
If I may respond with something technical: What bullshit!
Research shows that students largely maintain the core beliefs they held before entering college. Their views may shift slightly left or right, but the bigger shift is this: exposure to differing perspectives increases tolerance. The indoctrination narrative has been examined—and repeatedly debunked.
Now, the cost of tuition? That’s a legitimate concern. I’ve heard every criticism imaginable. Does watching movie clips and discussing philosophy justify the expense? For some, no answer will satisfy.
But what do students actually gain? Critical thinking. Intellectual humility. The ability to engage difference without fear.
Does studying The Matrix make someone a better accountant? No. But it might help them become a better human being.
And over the years, students told me their time in that course was anything but wasted. Even anonymous surveys said the same.
To Be, Or Not To Be …A Battery
When I first developed the course, American culture was steeped in The Matrix. Nearly everyone had seen it—or at least knew about it. Fifteen years later, that changed. Fewer students had watched it. But ironically, the themes became more relevant. Artificial Intelligence. Simulation theory. Questions about what is real.
The film’s premise is simple and unsettling: humanity creates AI. AI replicates itself. A war erupts. Humans lose. Now human bodies exist as an energy source for machines, suspended in a simulated reality.
Yes, suspend disbelief. Science protests. But philosophy leans in.
Neo is unaware he is living in a simulation. His body lies dormant while his consciousness inhabits a fabricated world. Then he is offered a choice: remain asleep—or wake up. The red pill or the blue pill.
The Matrix is more than sci-fi. It is modern myth-making—layered with religious, philosophical, and classical themes. It asks the enduring question: What is real?
The Wachowskis intended to create entertainment. But they also created art—art that wrestles with what it means to be fully human.
And that question never gets old.
There’s A Glitch In The Matrix
One of the most memorable scenes involves a déjà vu moment—Neo sees a black cat pass by twice.
“Déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix,” Trinity explains. “It happens when they change something.”
For our purposes, let’s Leave Descartes and Baudrillard at the door and set aside simulation theory. Ignore the idea whether we are really living in a cosmic computer program and consider this:
What happens when your matrix glitches? When life throws a curveball. A split-fingered fastball. A slurve. A ghost forkball. Call it what you will, it’s still a disappointment. It may not be an all out suffering, but it can feel dangerously close.
Disappointments are deeply personal. One person’s tragedy is another’s relief. Losing a job may devastate one person—and liberate another. The end of a marriage might crush someone—or free them.
Still, there are common disappointments:
- The death of a loved one
- Betrayal by someone trusted
- A belief system that no longer holds
- Financial collapse
- A medical diagnosis that changes everything
What would your list include?
Unless you live a remarkably sheltered life, you’ve faced at least one of these. Maybe you navigated it well. Maybe you fumbled until you found your footing.
Either way, you likely learned three things:
- Disappointments happen.
- Disappointments change things.
- Disappointments can be handled.
The first two are unavoidable. Life shifts. Something breaks. The world is not what it was yesterday.
But the third—that’s where freedom lives.
You are still here. You adapted. You endured. The fact that you’re reading this far into the post suggests something important: You already possess the capacity to respond to the glitch. Not by pretending it didn’t happen. Not by retreating into simulation. But by choosing awareness.
By taking the red pill.
Survival Of The …Intelligence?
Knowledge is freedom. Freedom is knowing yourself. We have inherited some truly great things from our ancestors. It is important to recognize these contributions. Our brains are equipped with survival instincts. Check out this series for a more detailed explanation.
The fight or flight instinct is a kind of “intelligence.” It helped our ancestors know when they were in danger. With time, they learned to recognize and recall dangerous situations. Those who didn’t remember were likely removed from the human gene pool early on. The ones who were “smarter” survived.
Metaphorically, the fight or flight response is part of our DNA and is deeply ingrained in us. It happens faster than our reasoning, which means we can make mistakes when we need to make quick decisions or judgments.
If we don’t have all the facts, we tend to fill in the gaps using our past experiences and knowledge. This is shaped by our biases, opinions, and worldview. In a split second, our mind processes this information, and we must make a decision.
Filling In The Blanks
For years, I used an exercise like this in a visual communications course. It proved how, without all the information needed, the brain fills in the blanks.
Study the picture above. Besides the obvious of what the object is, is there anything you see in the cloud formation? It is possible to interpret more than one thing.
In the cloud formation, I see a ghostly 3/4 profile face of a Cocker Spaniel. There is a nose and eye of a dog at the bottom right. Long flowing ears extend from the center to the upper left corner.
Do you see it? Once you do it is hard to un-see it.
The same principle is at work here allowing us to see a dog’s face or pink elephants in clouds. We can also find images in tree bark, shadows, and random ink blots. We also see faces on the moon and the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich.
As part of the survival instinct the brain has the ability to make sense of random patterns. It does this by “filling in the blanks.” The process is called pareidolia or apophenia.
Part of our survival instinct is to quickly understand our surroundings. Even with missing details and a lack of clear reality, our brain connects the dots to form patterns. The picture above isn’t actually a dog in the clouds, nor is it the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. Instead, our brains create familiar images based. This ability to quickly “read” the environment helped our ancestors to spot hidden dangers, allowing those who could do it to survive longer.
Faces and body parts are common images, and our brain often tries to combine them. This applies not just to images but also to any incomplete information we encounter. Since events occur quickly, we might get things wrong, no matter how much we try.
Life events teach us that “knowing yourself” means recognizing our mistakes. The good news is we can learn to avoid making them.
To improve our decisions, we should slow down the decision-making process. This means waiting to judge or decide until we have more information. Once we’ve gathered all the relevant information, we can make a more informed decision.
To Err Is Human
In life, we all try to do our best. There is no clear guide to help the heart through pain and disappointments. When things go wrong, we cope in different ways, often by turning to various “voodoo” explanations.
- “It is someone else’s fault”
- “I am being punished because I must have done something wrong”
- “God is teaching me a lesson”
- “I will ‘grow’ stronger if I overcome this”
Coming up with an excuse might make us feel better at first. However, we eventually have to face the disappointment. Disappointments aren’t punishments from a fickle god or karma for past actions. The truth is, many disappointments arise from our own ignorance. Most are caused by building a belief system that offers comfort and shields us from disappointments.
We get so caught up in avoiding life’s challenges that we often miss the disappointments that surprise us. “Life is pain,” the Dread Pirate Roberts said to the princess in The Princess Bride.
Pain is disappointment, and living means experiencing it. However, we shouldn’t fear disappointments. We need to choose to be present and humble, accepting and adjusting to disappointments as they arise. With time, we can learn to handle them better.
The greatest defense is an offense. Being on the offensive here challenges us. We need to continue to do our best under the circumstances. Best selling author Brennan Manning, whom I have quoted in previous posts, often shared a particular saying.
“Today, I will not ‘should-on’ myself.”
Hearing “not should-on” is a gentle way of saying, “Today, I will not criticize myself.” It means I won’t dwell on my disappointments or second-guess my life. I’m doing my best, and I will treat myself as kindly as I treat others.
That last part is about being kind to myself like I am to others. It’s amazing how fast we help someone who is hurting and want them to feel better. Practicing kindness to myself, just as I do for others, is a good daily rule.
When a “glitch” occurs in our little world, forget the mystical explanations. Simply acknowledge there is a glitch and nothing more. No hidden secrets. No hidden meanings.
Bad things happen to good people, and it will happen again. As rational beings, we can recognize this issue, enabling us to work through the “glitch” honestly and without pretense.
When it happens we can say, “Whoa. Déjà vu all over again.”
Disappointments happen because we are alive. And that …is far better than the alternative.
Editor’s note: This essay was originally published as Life Disappointments: A Glitch in the Matrix, Pts. 1-2 on 11-16-17, 2023
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