The Year We Abandoned Reality

I’ll have what he’s having.

I’ve already posted the famous clip of Jeff Goldblum talking about rationalizations in The Big Chill so I’m not going to do it again here, but suffice to say: rationalization is human. Many of us get through our day by perfecting those little ways of avoiding reality.

“I’ll get back to work after I finish this puzzle....and then this puzzle...and then did I do the ones in the New Yorker yet?…”
With me it’s after there are no more available puzzles anywhere in the known universe, and if you think there are some I haven’t done, please done tell me.

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
A way to justify not speaking out about something you know is wrong because it doesn’t affect you.

“I don’t like being a Karen, but it’s my responsibility to the neighborhood.”
Self-explanatory.

“This sweater is totally worth $300.”
Is it going to prevent you from buying other sweaters? I didn’t think so.

“It’s the holidays and I deserve to treat myself.”
But…have you been saying that every day since Thanksgiving?

“I’ll make that my new year’s resolution and do it in 2026.”
HAHAHAHAHA.

And while I’m not going to say “There’s nothing wrong with that,” I will say that lying to ourselves in a fashion that can be brilliant but is more often extremely stupid is one of the many ways in which we make terrible use of those glorious minds that nobody else in the animal kingdom has. It’s what makes us both amazing and awful.

I can rationalize with the best of them, but there’s always that little voice inside me that pipes up whenever I do that says, “Yeah, but you know that’s not true.” For better or worse, it’s kind of always been that way. I’ve had problems sleeping since I was a child because I couldn’t look away from and took personal responsibility for everything from preventing nuclear war (just by worrying about it) to, well, not being able to sleep. I KNOW. And then critiquing others the same way was a defense mechanism I developed as a picked-on 7^th grader. So the people I’ve dated have either loved me for calling them out on their shit, or dumped me for pointing out the problems with the way they kiss in an email (I tried to make it sound like I was joking but in fact I seriously wanted to know, What did he think he was doing with his mouth?). As I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed coping strategies that usually act as checks on my worst truth-telling impulses and thereby prevent me from saying the bad stuff out loud most of the time. The occasional mean and self-sabotaging thing does slip out, like in the above kissing incident, or when I said to an editor we were interviewing for my doc about a film he edited that I really didn’t like, “Boy that must have been a slog!” Other techniques I practice on the regular keep me away from internal obsessing, like cutting myself off from the news to focus on something else when I start feeling too depressed or angry, or arresting the memory churn of all the setbacks I’ve had or the stupid things I said yesterday or the imaginary argument I would have with insert-your-favorite-spokesperson-for-evil-here, by taking a moment to realize that I’m doing it (thanks therapy and Zoloft!) and reminding myself of something that my logical mind can glom on to: that it’s wholly unproductive. This game of “Look over there!” for my consciousness has enabled me to quiet the negative enough that I can keep writing, pitch my ideas coherently to others (sometimes), and continue trying to succeed in an industry that, let’s face it, is virtually impossible to succeed in. Is that last part necessarily a good thing? The jury’s still out.

This year, however, feels like the year that lying to ourselves became a full-on American pastime. We took Ozempic when we didn’t need to and then told ourselves our arms and collarbones were supposed to be delicately snappable. We pumped fillers into our faces with abandon and then collectively decided that Oh no no no, we absolutely did not see how we all looked like the same mediocre caricatures with Marlon-Brando-in-the-Godfather cheeks, too-thin-to-breathe noses, and lips that came straight off the hindquarters of a balloon dog that those people who sit outside the Met Museum draw for tourists.

We watched everything that the Trump Administration was doing and told ourselves, either 1) It wasn’t happening (Republicans) because Trump and the right-wing media said it wasn’t and evidence/science is just something dreamed up by Satan and big pharma to fuck with us and aren’t we all basically George Santos at this point?; 2) We couldn’t do anything about it because we have no power (moderate Democrats, particularly the ones in Congress, who actually could do plenty); 3) The fascism doesn’t matter because it’s helping us make so much money that we can easily throw aside any morals, insight or foresight we once claimed to have (all of tech, which we expected from most of them but TIM COOK HOW COULD YOU?!); or 4) The fascism was just meant to draw our attention away from the grift, so just don’t give them what they want by acknowledging the fascism (people who aren’t affected by the fascism).

Then there’s the industry I work in, where creative obliviousness is required, and boy did they deliver on the lack of meaningful self-reflection. Oh no, the financial trouble with the film biz has nothing to do with an outmoded business model, so let’s fix it by consolidating into even bigger badness and sucking up to the government to make sure we get that payday! #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter never happened, so let’s go back to only hiring white dudes to make more action movies for 16-35 year old man-children who don’t go to the theater any more, rather than trying to build audiences out of the other 79% of the population! We learned nothing from 2020 about how taking better care of our workforce makes them more productive, so let’s go back to working even shittier hours and paying through the nose for overtime while our workers die in accidents when they fall asleep behind the wheel!

And then there’s AI. From what I’ve seen, the delusions range from, This is a multi-billion-dollar industry! (at the moment it’s not at all profitable) to, It can do most jobs better than people can! (if you’ve gotten utterly useless AI coverage that couldn’t parse any script where the first turning point doesn’t signpost the shit out of itself between pages ten to fifteen, you know how true that is) to, It doesn’t matter how that energy suckage is destroying the planet because any day it’s going to solve climate change! (Um no). And while we still can pretty easily tell the difference between things that have been created by AI and things that haven’t if we want to, the problem is that too many of us seem to be deeply invested in not wanting to.

I get it. It was a shitty year, Rob Reiner is dead, and reality in general is just crap in so many ways right now that it often feels better to live in whatever your fantasy bubble is — AI slop, gaming, Bluesky, binging every Pixar movie or all seasons of Stranger Things depending on whether crying or screaming is your distraction of choice — than to step outside of it and try to figure out what’s real. And then, if we don’t like it, to not just stomp our feet like toddlers while furiously scrolling and reposting the horribleness until all of our of repetitive stress injuries act up, but to try and make it better.

But in the real world right now, we have pretty Christmas lights and/or your neighbor’s sagging inflatables doing something unexpectedly hilarious. We have the pillowy silence of a snow day, the pit-pat of the rain, the satisfying crunch of those thin ice edges under your feet when you walk outside, or, in other parts of the world, birdsong, the wind rustling in the trees, the thunk and swish of a basketball or the crack of a cricket bat, and fucking music. Some of us feel the sun on our faces and the wind in our hair, others have hugs, warm snuggly pets, hot cocoa, soft slippers and blankets, and good books — and okay, maybe that’s kind of somewhere between reality and unreality, but I’ll allow it as long as you pair it with some of those other things or take the time to savor the feel of the pages beneath your fingertips. Oh, and also sex. And laughter. And feel free to share in the comments a sensory experience from your current reality that makes you happy to be there.

Or don’t. But at least try and feel it, savor it, and let it remind you why the real world, even when it’s fraught, is where we need to spend 2026.

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