An exercise on reality.

We make things more complicated than they need to be and it's usually the result of our thoughts. I know I am guilty of this - but I strive to break away from it. Recently I've had a number of conversations with friends, acquaintances and the like, about things that wouldn't be so complicated if they just stopped thinking about it - or overthinking - or worrying about whatever it was we discussed. I think I needed to have these conversations because I needed to be shown how I do the same from time to time - and how to do it less.

We all need to "think" in a sense - as I write this, I'm engaging in a thought process - but we, as human beings don't spend enough time just "being" - living in the now, being aware of our presence and reality, and acting accordingly. It gets to the point where our thoughts distract us from our reality - and it is when we reach this point we make things more complicated than they are. You may believe that your thoughts reflect your reality - but not quite. Once you move beyond a point of acknowledgment and understanding of present circumstances, every other thought you think of your situation is a distraction from your reality. It's not always a bad thing to be distracted from present circumstances - you might need the distraction from time to time. It just seems that we live in a constant stream of thought that can carry us away from reality and bring us to places like worry, fear, anxiety, delusion, hubris, sadness, obsession, etc - abstractions of reality. It then takes something or someone to provide a reality check - to bring us "back to earth." And sometimes those reality checks come with unfortunate circumstances.

If you need an example, consider Eliot Spitzer - who has spent his career as Attorney General, and then Governor of New York as a politician who prided himself on eliminating fraud and corruption. The reality is that he was as corrupt as the entities he targeted - and it took a mundane tax inquiry by the IRS to set his reality check in motion. I don't know him (of course) but I'm sure that he was always aware that was he was doing was as salacious as the activities he sought to end - and who couldn't see the hypocrisy in that? But he continued, likely motivated by some stream of thoughts that led him to justify what he was doing (my guess is that he suffers from a deal of hubris) - and in continuing to do so, probably thought he wouldn't get caught. The reality on February 13, and still is now, is that everything we do, even if you are the Governor of New York is traceable, especially in this day and age - ESPECIALLY when it involves monetary transactions and ESPECIALLY(!!) when it involves the account of the Governor of New York. At the point when he decided to withdraw that $2000 from his account for the prostitute's services, was he acting as someone aware of reality?

I think the world would be a better place if we did a little less thinking and a lot more "being" - not mindlessness, but being mindful of our presence in this world, and the reality in which we exist.

(And I intend to write something a bit more creative about this topic - but I needed to work out my thoughts first. Hence the exercise.)

Together.

you're a star -
i'm a star -
we're all stars
in the same
constellation.
we burn brightly
by ourselves -
but we light
the night's sky
only when we're
seen together.


© 2008 Patricia B.

about my dreams:

i find that as i go along in my life in pursuit of my dreams, there are many days when the going along gets rough. and there are days when the word "rough" doesn't begin to describe how bad it is. it gets so bad that sometimes i wonder if the pursuit is really worth it at all. i think a part of the problem is, for me, that i'm not going after my dream in pursuit of happiness. i'm happy. i'm blessed and i am relatively healthy and God gave me the ability to do great things and i'm already doing great things. i'm content - i have many things that bring me joy. my dreams are not worth pursuing because attaining it will make me so much more happier than i am now - maybe it will, maybe it won't. i pursue my dreams mainly because i believe i was put here for a purpose, and it's my mission to fulfill that purpose. because my dream is not so much one i created but one that was given to me, it's hard for me to justify pursuing my dreams in the typical sense. it's as if it was literally another person that said, "Tricia, this is what you are here to do. So now, go do it." that's not exactly how that happened. i do know i was five or six years old - i was definitely in kindergarten and i may have actually been in kindergarten class when it happened. no one said anything to me and i don't really believe that at that age i even had the wherewithal to consider my life's purpose (even though i was an unusually bright kid.). but, there it was. what i was here to do. it was definitely given to me. and since it's not something i came up with on my own, i've had some issues figuring out how it was going to get done, and whether it's really worth my time at all. i think when you own something, anything, including a dream, it's easy to think about what you will do and won't do with it - because it's yours, either by creation or some other means of ownership. but when something is given to you, especially when you didn't ask for it, it's harder to just know what should be done with it, and if you should even bother to keep it. but i've kept it. even when i tried to throw it away, it always came back to me. and since the age of five or six i've been fortunate to discover just how it was i am to fulfill these purposes - the method too has been something given to me - not exactly something i thought about and made a decision to do. it might seem mindless - and it is mindless. i have not attached a tremendous amount of thought to keeping the dream or to the decision on how it should be pursued. so here i am in the midst of pursuing my dreams - and it's not easy. and i wonder, if my dream was given to me so easily, why is it that i can't pursue the dream as easily? i never told life what i wanted to do, and i never asked life what it wanted from me - life just told me what it was that i had to do without any effort on my part. so why is it that now that i'm actually doing what life wants me to do, life is making it so difficult? what's the point in all this? as i've written this, i've drawn the conclusion that life or whatever it is that gave me the dream isn't what makes things so difficult - it's me. it's me questioning it, it's me doing things that clearly go against the pursuit of the dream, it's my lack of faith that i am doing what i'm supposed to be doing that makes minor complications into huge difficulties. i need to trust, and i need to believe in it and be consistent in the trust and belief. the dream has always been trusting and faithful to me and things will likely get easier once i reciprocate.

© 2008 Patricia B.