For What It's Worth

Expectation, Perception, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

(10 minute read)

Key Takeaways:

• Much of our anxiety comes not from reality itself, but from the gap between reality and our expectations of how life should be.
• Perception is a discipline: what we choose to focus on shapes the “reality” we experience.
• Humans have always constructed alternate narratives—personal, political, and cultural—and wisdom lies in recognizing when belief departs from evidence.

It is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgment about it. And this you have the power to change.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.47

The things you think about controls the quality of your mind. You become your thoughts.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.16

…alternate realities are nothing new in America.

—Sarah Churchwell, The Wrath To Come, Bloomsbury Publishing, UK, 2022

In The Age of Magical Thinking 6 we explored how magical thinking persists in modern life, from the psychic industry to generational narratives that shape identity and belief. We have a tendency to trade evidence for emotional reassurance—a subtle form of magical thinking—especially when facing uncertainty, vulnerability, or lack of control. Greater self-awareness—through recognizing cognitive biases, questioning inherited assumptions, and choosing clarity over comforting illusion—helps us live more honestly.

Great Expectations (no not that one)

A universal human trait is the expectation we carry about life. With our ability to analyze and articulate experiences, we pour enormous energy into imagining our future. The distance between who we think we are now and our belief in the ideal self is what I call The Great Gap.

Much of the anxiety we experience in life grows out of this gap. The distance between who we are and who we believe we should be can feel vast, even impossible to cross. Religion and philosophy often tell us what kind of person we ought to become, but they seldom provide clear steps for how to become that person.

The visions of moral perfection or spiritual enlightenment that are offered can quietly become impossible standards making it toxic. When these ideals are treated as expectations rather than aspirations, they can widen the gap between who we are and who we believe we are supposed to be.

Becoming our ideal self can be as elusive as remembering last nights dream. It turns out that the existence of this gap, our expectations of the world, trying to reconcile that with toxic magical thinking, is burning us out.¹

In a small way, these articles are my attempt at trying to help close that gap. For the past few years stories have appeared here about people living their daily lives and struggling to find meaning.

• Jane McGonigal, who turned a debilitating physical injury into a best selling book, Reality Is Broken, where she encourages us to play more games while promising us a brighter future
• Marcus Aurelius, and the troubles he faced running the Roman Empire led to his personal journal (Meditations) providing us with relevant and practical principles that’s been handed down for centuries
• Elijah P. Lovejoy, failed pastor, failed educator, and failed editor/publisher. He literally gave his life to the cause of ending slavery. Shot down in cold blood, he is credited for personally escalating the abolitionist movement, eventually bringing the practice of slavery to end

Humanity has shown a remarkable capacity for compassion, creativity, and cooperation; we build communities, care for strangers, and strive to build a better world. Yet the same species capable of such goodness has also committed profound injustices, from cruelty and oppression to violence and indifference. The tension between these heights and depths defines our moral struggle, confronting us with both what we are and what we might become.

Despite some of the toxic power we previously studied, the good news—humanity is learning to cooperate, and the stories of those deeds offer hope and encouragement.

Over the long sweep of history, many forms of violence have been in decline, and today we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species’ existence.

—Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011

Despite perceptions to the contrary, Pinker argues that human violence has steadily declined and that we are now living in one of the most peaceful eras. It sounds like magical thinking itself, until we realize the reality.

Mass media’s If it bleeds, it leads phrase helps explain why public perception often diverges from the data. Although the statistics point to an overall decline in violence, constant exposure to violent incidents through legacy and social media can make it feel as though violence is universally increasing, even when broader trends suggest otherwise.

A universal human trait is our tendency to project our expectations onto reality. We consume violent and destructive images almost hourly, day after day, which reinforces the perception that the world is steadily getting worse—even when the evidence suggests otherwise.

We assume life should be fair and when the world fails to cooperate, we experience anxiety, resentment, or disillusionment. Rather than adjusting our expectations, we often reshape reality—through belief, narrative, or doctrine—to align with what feels morally necessary. It is this deeply human impulse to demand coherence and fairness from an indifferent universe that fuels much of our magical thinking.

The Weight of Expectation

Humans have a tremendous capacity for doing good. Yet, we cannot ignore that at the same time, we also have a large capacity to do harm. Both realities are true. Toxic magical thinking minimizes one in favor of the other; wisdom lies in holding them equally true.

If we are honest, this tension between light and shadow has always defined the human story. We are capable of astonishing compassion and unspeakable cruelty, often at the very same time. The question is not which side is real, but how we choose to organize ourselves in response to both. Our attempts to live together have always been shaped by this dual awareness.

When tribes joined to form communities they recognized that humans have a tendency for doing good. They also had to deal with the few humans that had the nerve to do bad.

Those who chose to live together quickly realized that, for the good of all, they needed shared agreements. Rules, laws, and traditions were created to limit harmful behavior. We understood that robbing or killing one another destroys the very fabric of society, so we established laws to protect it.

The common handshake is believed to have begun as a gesture to show that we approached one another unarmed. By extending an empty hand, we signal that we carry no weapons, no harm intended. As a society, this simple act reflects a deeper agreement: we keep one another safe by choosing not to harm.

These agreements—what political philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau would later call the social contract—have helped keep our species going. At their core, they express what we look for, hope for, and strive toward: our expectations. And those expectations take two forms, individual and collective.

I’ve written extensively about the individual expectations that we have, more recently here. Societal expectations are often taught, shaped, or at least reinforced by our individual expectations. For example, we may believe that if we are kind and considerate, others will respond in kind. It’s true that, for a society to hold together, most of us need to get along. But we also know that not everyone is willing—and there will always be bad actors.

The flaw in our thinking is believing that our kindness will always be returned. There is no such guarantee. When someone treats us poorly, we may briefly question that belief, but usually slip back into magical thinking. We resolve to be even kinder, hoping to finally earn protection—as if a magical force field switches on to keep us safe.

The world—the universe—is not a single, purposeful being. It is cold, distant, and indifferent. It owes us nothing, and we owe it nothing in return. Unlike the Greek myths, when good or bad things happen, there are no unseen forces working for or against us. Once we accept this, the fog of magical thinking begins to lift, dissolving like morning mist at sunrise.

The Discipline of Perception: The Space Between

In his best-selling book, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality, Anthony De Mello shares a brief parable that gently challenges one of our most persistent forms of magical thinking—the belief that good deeds reliably produce good outcomes. The Boy and the Crocodile reminds us that the world moves according to its own logic, untouched by our moral accounting, no matter how strongly we wish it behaved otherwise.

You may already be familiar with it, but here is a brief summary of the tale:

• A little boy finds a crocodile trapped in a net. The crocodile begs for the boy to help, claiming it only wants to live in order to take care of its young.
• The boy, filled with compassion, frees the crocodile, who, immediately turns on the boy …and proceeds to eat him.
• As the boy is seized, he cries out, So this is what I get for my good deeds! The crocodile responds, But, this is the way the world is.
• A bird and a dog would later confirm the crocodile’s truth, but only after their own failed expectations lead to the same ruin.

Several versions of this tale exist, some offering a happier ending. De Mello’s version, however, unsettles the comforting expectation that good deeds are always rewarded. His telling suggests something more sobering: reality does not bend to our moral hopes. Evil and suffering are not illusions we can wish away through magical thinking—they are part of the world as it is.

A number of New Age beliefs—often built on half-truths and loosely applied theories—circulate widely online. Framed as timeless laws of nature, they can sound compelling, especially to those searching for certainty or control in an uncertain world. However, when examined carefully, these claims do not withstand rigorous scrutiny or verifiable scientific testing. Familiar examples include the so-called laws of attraction, cosmic compensation, manifestation, and related ideas that promise predictable outcomes without reliable evidence.

When presented, these ideas can sound internally consistent. But the only claims we can confidently treat as law are those grounded in science and confirmed by evidence. Without such evidence, these claims remain another expression of magical thinking.

It is true that those who embrace these ideas often argue that their claims cannot be disproven. The same reasoning appears in arguments for the existence of aliens, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, leprechauns, or unicorns. In each case, the burden of proof is subtly shifted to the skeptic, who is asked to prove that X does not exist.

But that is not how logic works. When someone asserts that something exists, the burden of proof rests with the person making the claim. It is their responsibility to explain why they believe in X and to provide evidence that X is real. The burden does not fall on the skeptic to disprove it.

To let go of magical thinking is not to surrender to cynicism. It is to stop demanding that reality conform to our wishes before we are willing to engage with it.

The world offers no guarantee that kindness will be rewarded, that suffering will have a purpose, or that our expectations will be fulfilled. But we still have the power to choose how we respond: to test our beliefs against evidence, to revise our stories when they no longer fit reality, and to create the fairness, compassion, and cooperation that the universe does not provide on its own.

Wisdom is not found in pretending that the world is kinder or more orderly than it is. It is found in seeing it clearly—and choosing, nevertheless, to make it better.