I was looking through my computer just now and found this old journal entry/stream of consciousness from April 14, 2011 and thought it mighty appropriate for what I'm feeling and what's going on in my life right now. Funny how that works.
Thought I'd post it publicly....
I want to be real
Some people choose to believe in a
world in which there is a possibility of perfection. They choose to ignore the mistakes of their fellow man and
the mistakes they themselves make.
Take yourself back, if you will, to the question of a tree falling in
the woods and if no one is there to hear it crash does it then fall
silently? If you choose to ignore
the crash, then do you negate the sound into nonexistence? Conversely, if you ignore what you
believe to be unfavorable, does that create a world of perfection? ....Or just a delusion? Now when I put it this way, it makes it
sound like a delusion is a negative thing. But who am I to say whether something is negative or
positive. What really matters here
is the pursuit of reality. I want
to be real. I want to live in
reality. I want to embrace what it
means to live and to live abundantly.
In the Bible, Jesus says that he came to give life abundantly. Isn’t that what we all really
want? Don’t we all want to be free
to be real? I don’t know if I have
ever met any one person who likes to live behind a wall of make believe and
never really know themselves or let anyone in close enough to get behind said
wall. We, humans, are social
creatures and need to have that human interaction; we need to need to know the
presence of reality.
That
leads me to the question that I have been debating for the last 4 years of my
life. What is real? Which leads me to more questions like:
What does it mean to be real? What
is reality? Is it possible to have
a reality into which everyone fits and everyone understands? In fact, aren’t these the questions of
all great minds over the eons?
The
context that I have been debating most heavily on is the idea of being real in
the context of relationships.
However, isn’t that the basis of life and of living in general? Define life to me if it is not about
relationships. You have a
relationship with everything and everyone. If you think about it, you have a relationship with your
car, snowboard, mom, dad, brother, friend, lover, room... etc. Some sort of relationship exists with
all things everywhere. Therefore,
I want to explore how to be real in relationships.
I believe in a simple reality. A reality that exists in the
present. For, there is no other
reality. The only way to be real
is to be completely present. That
is easier said than done because there is such a thing as a time line. Every one of us has a past and every
one of us has a future. These are
very distracting concepts when you try living fully in the present.
It
is hard to be present in all things.
There is this thing called justice. It does not always rain evenly on life nor in the way we
think it needs to. So therefore,
the past or the future or our wall becomes a very good place of sanctuary. However, I’m not sure how safe that
sanctuary really is. Based on my
experience so far, the only way that I can be sure of safety is to completely
wall myself off, which I think is utterly impossible. Because I have people in my life that are closer to me than
any wall ever could be. Also, like
I stated earlier, people are social creatures and need to have interaction with
other humans. Therefore, a
completely sealed wall will, at some point, be breached no matter what anyone
says or does to the contrary.
Therefore, if my sanctuary has a fault in it already, why do I continue
to hide there? Why does anyone
continue to hide there? I think
its because it does offer some relief for the time being. But it then will inhibit you to live in
the present and therefore will hamper your ability to be real. Choose your poison; Inability to be
real vs real life affecting you in a real sense. Embrace the rollercoaster of today or the guarded stability
of a façade that may blow up in the end.
Now
I could go back and edit this whole stream of consciousness to persuade whoever
may read this to one idea or another.
But the truth of the matter is that both options sound great in
different circumstances. I don’t
always want to be present. There
are times when I really want to hide from the world. I have tried finding a hole that I can crawl into that will
swallow me whole and spit me out into a different place and time away from all
my troubles. Sometimes I can find
a hole that will cradle me for a while, but then (here it comes) I have to go
back to reality at some point, and it’s never pretty. I have to accept how my life is weaving itself to be and I
have to figure out a way to cope with it.
So why ever go and hide in the
first place? Why, because it is
easier to hide away until you can get your wall back up or get your feet under
you enough to pretend you are happy and perfect again. No one wants to deal with troubles in
front of other people. Wouldn’t it
be so freeing to be able to live wide open and let people know what is
happening with you? Yes, it would,
however, the problem with that idea is that there are too many people who have
been hurt and have been living in a place of sanctuary that they don’t
understand what it is to live real anymore. Therefore a lot of people will more than likely slam you for
being real. What a pity. But a truth I’ve experienced. Sadly. So again I say, pick your poison.
Sad
to say that there hasn’t really been much of a conclusion in this eons old
debate and discussion. One must
find out what it is to be real for oneself.
To
fall is not to fail. You fail when
you don’t try. If I get up I might
fall back down again. So let’s get
up, come on.
The joy is being alive to it and working through it...
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Just thought this picture would be fun to put on this post.
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| Random photo shoot from college |
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