We tend to share a common superstitious belief. Not God, not ghosts, or anything like that. It’s a belief in dramatic escape. A thing that will change you forever.
Quitting porn, taking up cold showers, meeting a mentor, reading the right book, getting a degree, doing LSD, or having a homosexual experience. These are just some examples of things people often expect to change their lives dramatically. As if it divides life into “before” and “after”.
Usually, we expect these things to change us for the better. But it works the other way too, when we fear that an experience will corrupt us forever.
This belief is not overt. Often it’s hard to notice at all. I certainly notice it in unexpected places. I will get a PhD and I will be a Dr. Oh, it’s that story again! I spell “I will get a PhD” but deep inside I mean “people will respect me, life will never be the same.”
The story always ends the same way: there is no dramatic change. You have the experience, but you are still the same person. Except for a tiny detail. Whatever it is you think might bring massive change, let me spoil it: it will not flip your world.
That’s not to say there is no change. It just never happens in an instant. As a teenager, I read Robert Greene’s “48 Laws of Power” and, naturally, thought I gained a grimdark insight into reality. Years later I realize it didn’t make me go full Machiavelli, but still taught me bits about how people work. Real change happened over time as I saw examples and counterexamples for the ideas from the book.
Fundamentally the dramatic change in expectation is about responsibility. It’s always about something that brings change. Something that makes the decision for us. For some reason we really want this something to be responsible. A voice from the sky will come and then I will do the right thing. But it it never came, and never will. The closest thing you have is your own desire for change.
One funny example of a thing that won’t flip your world, but looks like it will: realizing things don’t flip your world.