|
|
Be Brave: It's only Reality
I think that I am going to attempt to be brave and try to give a good
look at what reality is. Many people see reality to be many different
things. Does this mean that reality is different to each person?
In this case reality wouldn’t be a concrete thing, but rather an individual
creation of each person’s mind, an illusion that each one of us individually
believes.
This seems more to be the opposite of reality.
This is what people do to escape reality – create their own perception
of their life, one that is easier for them to deal with. So I threw
that out as a definition of reality. I went through several other
theories, and finally came up with one that seemed to make the most sense.
I think that reality can best be described as a sphere. We all perceive
it a little different because we are all looking from different sides of
it. We are all looking at the same thing, but with a rotation of this ball,
our view would also change. Some people prefer to close their eyes and
pretend that it doesn’t exist, while others go so far as to turn their
back on it, and stare instead into the emptiness that they see. To
them, this is reality. Then there are the few that are willing to dive
right into the middle of this sphere and look out… using reality as their
looking glass. They can see all different sides as aspects from the
middle because their are not restricted by the horizon or their line of
sight. They can even see past the masks and coverings, because they
have gotten past all of that. They have chosen not to turn their back,
but rather to
dive in headfirst. They use reality as the lens in which they
decipher everything else that they look at. This is the best that
I can come up with as a definition of reality. And each person’s
perception of reality is only the angle which they allow themselves to
view from.
One of the definitions that Webster’s gives
for reality is “the state of being real.” To be real
would require each man to drop their masks, stop playing a role, and
deal with who he really is under all the illusions. For many, this
is a very tough thing to accept. Many people have a problem with
how to act because they are afraid of what others will think. They
want to get approval from everyone, but that is not possible. “About
all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you
for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and
some won’t like you at all.” (--Rita Mae Brown) This is a hard fact
for some to accept. Some people derive their self worth from what
others think of them. But the approval of others is a cruel master.
No one has power over you unless you give it to him or her, and forcing
yourself to gain their approval forces you to be under their rule.
In most cases, they could care
less about you, and so they do not mind if they hurt you or not.
I think this is why so many people have a problem with low self-esteem.
They base their worth on what other people think of the illusion they try
to create. How fair is that to you? You are doomed to fail
from the start for two reasons. One, you cannot control what others
will think about you no matter how hard you try. Two, they are not
even seeing the real you, so even if they do approve, they are approving
of
the wrong thing. “It is in vain hope to please all alike.
Let a man stand with his face in what
direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of
the world” (--George Dennison
Prentice). So then the first step to reality is to “be real”,
and accept that not everyone will like you
for it, and that doesn’t matter unless you make it matter. What
a happier generation of people we would all be if we could just accept
that one fact.
Another definition that Webster’s gives for
reality is “a real event, entity, or state of affairs.”
Sometimes this is hard to determine though, because everyone will look
at each “real” event from a
different angle. How many times have you tried to find out what
happened and asked more than one person and gotten a different story from
each person? Each person has a different story, and yet none of them
are lying. Each of them is telling you exactly what they perceived
from the event. This makes you wonder if what we are taught as history
really ever happened at
all. “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened
told by people who weren’t there.”
(--George Santayana) All we have to believe in is what others
saw from their point of view, and that view is often only a tiny part of
the entire event. So then we should not take history too seriously,
or the future too lightly.
There are many different things that filter our
perception of reality at any given time. These
include previous experiences, state of mind, and emotions. How
many times have you gotten stuck in the worst traffic when you were in
the biggest hurry? But is that just because the world is out to get
you or is it just the way that you are perceiving things? When you
are in no particular rush, you do not seem to notice if you are forced
to go slower. You will only notice something when it is important
to you. And it often seems that when you are angry, everyone is
trying to aggravate you, but when you are happy, it is easy for others
to please you. That usually is not because they are doing anything
different, but because you are seeing the actions differently. Your
emotions will color the picture that you are seeing.
Many people limit their view of reality by
how they think, some by how they see, and others by how they act.
“You have to choose where you will look, and in making that choice you
eliminate entire worlds.” (--Barbara Bloom) Many people believe things
because they were raise that way, or told to. They do not understand
what they believe or why, they just do. This action taints anything they
will ever see. If you have ever tried to argue with someone who has
no basis for their belief, they seem to be the hardest to reach.
They cannot explain their beliefs, so you cannot understand them, and they
refuse to understand you. “The belief that there is only one truth
and
that oneself is in possession of it seems to me to be the deepest root
of all evil that is in the world.”
(--Max Born) Believing that you are, and always will be, right
is like putting on a blindfold to all that is a reality. Not only
to you refuse to believe, you refuse to even see it.
In order to be able to accurately view reality,
you must first abandon all beliefs that could hinder your view. This
is rarely done because it is such a scary thing. To abandon all that
you know and accept as truth and start over causes you to evaluate everything
over and realize that you were probably wrong about a lot. It completely
throws away almost everything that you would have previously based your
life upon. So I guess the real challenge is to strip yourself of
all
opinions and dive into the sphere of reality. Only completely
submerged and with an open mind can you ever even begin to view that which
we call reality.
This page created with Netscape Navigator Gold