People tend to seek consistency in their beliefs and perceptions. So what happens when one belief conflicts with another valued belief? The term cognitive dissonance is used to describe the feeling of discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs. When there is a discrepancy between beliefs and behaviors, something must change in order to eliminate or reduce the dissonance.
So when an anticipated event, an expectation, fails to materialize any of us, all of us even, are challenged to cope with the distance that prevails between wanted and actual; that can be tricky.
Yesterday there was a lot of attention focused on the possibility of the end of the world. Fortunately for this blog, it didn’t happen and I can continue to speculate on the significance and colorful array of being in our shared living years. There has been some research into the history of similar predictions; in 634 BCE many ancient Romans believed the world would end. In Matthew 16:28 Jesus told a crowd of people, “Verily I say to you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom”. So in 60 CE this and similar statements led many early Christians, including St. Paul, to believe that Judgment Day would happen in their lifetime. Others as well, Pope Innocent III in 1284 CE; Johannes Stoeffler in 1524 CE; even Christopher Columbus in his Book of Prophecies, had said the world should have ended in 1658 CE. Any list would be remiss without Pat Robertson saying in the fall of 1982 that the world would end, he darn well guaranteed it. This list is impressive; the common denominator being ~ we’re still here. And much like those who believed and then were left to pick up the pieces of their lives after missing the train-to-glory, we can take comfort in knowing that we’re a resilient lot and prone towards rethinking our perception of what is real.
I talk about what is real a lot because I am one who has grown sick and tired of being sick and tired. The best medicine and therapy I have found that money can’t buy is genuine acceptance with heaping doses of unbiased processing.
With that my happy prognosis’s is looking favorable; until the end of my world.
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