The Glamour Trap: Learning to See Through Your Desires

The movie is never as good as the book.

The reason for this is when we read a book, we’ve already cast it, set the scene, and played our version of the movie in our minds.

And it’s rare for the movie to match our imagination.

The same concept applies to our desires around fancy job titles and expensive “prestige” acquisitions.

We create a “movie” in our minds about what that promotion will mean or what that new shiny object will do for us.

We generously apply a sheen of glamour to the object of our desire.

In our minds, it’s got a patina and a legend.

Reality rarely meets the level of glamour our minds have concocted.

The promotion comes with extra hours and co-workers willing to stab you in the back to take your place — and a litany of other things your mind didn’t think of.

The new shiny object falls flat; nobody notices, and if they do, they don’t really care.

And we suffer from the disparity.

We must learn to separate the glamour from the object of our desire; we must, as Marcus Aurelius said,