The Death of Ideals

"Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans--I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment."
- Elizabeth Lesser

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Grief is a sneaky bugger. Like variegated yarn it weaves its way into our lives, resulting in subtle (sometimes not-so-subtle) changes in hue. While most of us expect to mourn death, divorce, or disease, we are confounded by loss that cannot be touched or researched in any scientific journal: that of innocence.

For me, it all started with Santa. I still remember the moment my older sister and I put the pieces together: one portly man, a magic sleigh loaded with presents, pulled by flying reindeer, shimmying down the flues of houses all over the world in one night? Ya. Right. And, hey, didn’t the handwriting on Santa’s thank-you notes bear a strong resemblance to our father’s? The look on our mother’s face when we confronted her with the case files merely confirmed the gig was up. 

I thought I would feel proud for solving the Santa mystery. Instead, I was disillusioned by the years of tooth money, chocolate bunnies, and carefully-filled stockings, not purveyed by magical figures from faraway lands, but by the two hands of my very real parents. I was too young to know it then, but this moment was the first pearl in strand of ideals that would eventually break apart as I got older. 

From birth until about age seven the part of our brain responsible for logic and reason (prefrontal cortex) is undeveloped. From age seven until approximately twenty-five, prefrontal synapses burgeon. As they do, our problem-solving ability advances and the idyllic lenses through which we view world are gradually replaced by realism.

What no one ever tells us is just how emotionally difficult this process can be. Life chips away at our ideals until the pain of holding on to them is greater than the pain of letting them go.

Here are the most commonly grieved ideals I have encountered in my work as a therapist:

1. Justice and fairness:  Bad things can happen to good people, innocent people serve time, guilty people go free, promotions are given to people who haven't earned them. There will be repeated opportunities to remember that neither fairness nor justice are guaranteed. (Sidebar: I am forty-five and I still get a little bummed out about this one).
2. Parents:  In order to survive, human infants are hard-wired to perceive their parents as loving, capable, and protective. We will believe this about our parents until we are ready to see them as real people with real strengths and limitations. 
3. Childhood: If you’ve ever longed for “Childhood 2.0,” particularly around holidays, birthdays, graduations, funerals and the like, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Most of us  yearn to know how things might have turned out differently had we gotten the childhood we wanted.
4. Adulthood: As children we daydream of “someday.” We fantasize about what we will do or have, when or whom we will marry, how many children we will have, how happy we will feel. Then, at ages twenty-five to thirty-five, we realize that “someday” is right now. The life we envisioned may or may not be the one we have. Perhaps we didn’t marry by thirty or couldn’t conceive the children we planned for. We discover that happiness, like other emotions, is fleeting. To propagate joy we must also tend to moments of sorrow, loneliness, anger, and fear.
5. Career Path:  As a counselor, I rarely hear of people who, at age 18, chose a profession and stayed the course until retirement. Yet so many of us chastise ourselves for a career path is neither clear nor straight. As we evolve, so too do our career choices. This sometimes requires us to begin again which, given that employment is closely tied to security, can be quite frightening.
6. Marriage/Partnership: The fairytales of my youth touted salvation in the form of romantic love. Love had the power to turn servant stepdaughters into princesses, transform ghastly beasts into dazzling princes, and revive the comatose. But those stories ended with glass slippers and passionate kisses. Had they played out a few more years, I’m certain we would have read about arguments over sex, money, and chores. Many facets of real, long-term partnership are neither sexy nor glamorous. Naturally, we can feel disappointed when fact and fiction do not align. 
7. Control: We can plot a course for the ship, but we cannot control the weather. Sometimes all we can do is stop, take a breath, and figure out the next best step. Control may seem tantamount to safety but we are just as safe in the absence of control we never had to begin with.
8. Health/Longevity: Most of us imagine that both we and our loved ones will live perfectly healthy lives and die peacefully in our sleep at age 105. When illness or death pay us an early visit, we mourn that health and longevity can no longer be taken for granted.  
9. Permanence:  Children crave routine because it helps them feel safe in a world that constantly changes. As a kid, I loved visiting my grandparents' house because, no matter how long it had been since our last visit, things always seemed to be just as we’d left them. My grandmother's death in 2002 was particularly sad because it was a harbinger of impermanence. It has taken a while for me to reconcile that every one and everything is temporary. Knowing this is one thing; living it is another. The more we wish for our lives to remain the same, the more we can feel upended by change.

The age at which we recalibrate our assumptions will vary according to our personal circumstances and degree of openness. 

Though its intensity eventually subsides, grief is often cyclical and ongoing. Life has an uncanny gift for shining light on the places that may always be tender. For instance, the childhood wounds we made peace with in early adulthood can be reawakened when we become parents. This can also happen when our children reach the age(s) we were originally injured. 

The next time you feel as if there has been a terrible mixup in the cosmic kitchen, ask which of the above ideals you may be struggling to recalibrate. Need help? Try scanning your internal dialogue for "shoulds" (e.g., “My parents should have been more responsive.” or “My relationship should have lasted."). "Should statements" are the expression of an unconscious wish to live more freely. Instead of telling yourself how things should have been or how they should be, remind yourself that everything you experience is divinely chosen for your healing and growth. Gently loosening the grip on idealistic assumptions allows us to make peace with what is.


​Dr. Jill Gross is a licensed psychologist, therapist, and counselor. She offers grief therapy, divorce support, and other counseling services in the Phinney Greenwood area of Seattle, WA.  Struggling with something that didn't turn out quite the way you wanted?  Schedule a free consultation to find out how therapy or counseling can help you find peace!

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