Welcome To Reality

September 17, 2008

At a party recently, a group was discussing and wondering why life is so tough, why you never get a break, why things always seem to go wrong, why everybody’s broke. One woman chimed in “Well, welcome to reality”.

Whose reality?

That’s not my reality.

Is it just the reality of people committed to being sick and miserable?

Is it the reality of people who watch the news and believe that it really represents the world we live in? The news on TV is only ever bad, which is just not possible. But it will still paralyze you if you watch it.

Is it the reality of people who have lived with financial tension for so long they no longer see a fridge full of food? What exactly do they need so much that they can’t buy ?

Is it just our culture? I’m reminded of the type of people who work in Small Business Loans in banks. Now I know that banks (at least in Canada) are doing what they’re supposed to which is to be risk-averse (they’re not investors after all) and to keep our money safe, and they do it well. But the Loans officers across the desk-who are also just doing their job-have gotten a lot of practice at saying No.

They read the proposals, purse their lips, look down through their progressive bifocals (nothing against them either, I wear them myself, see?

, it’s just the image I’m conjuring), you can hear the sizzle as their scrap of imagination fries up, the more of the proposal they read, and they hand it back to you across the desk with a terse, tight-lipped, and final little “No”. No, No, No, No.

Reality can’t be real. It’s not the same for any two people. There are no rules to this game. You can make them all up as you go.

Have a little creativity. Reality is whatever you say it is. Make your own reality. Yeah, ok, you don’t have the exact car you want. In your list of things you’re thankful for, is your car on the list anyway?

There are people for whom everything is a Yes. They say Yes things, they see them, they live them. Their life becomes a self-directed Yes because they chose it. Their imagination is unleashed. They invent their own Northern Star.

Get excited about what’s right in your life. Most of us have so much of it. Continue to dream. It’s you in the control tower. It’s you at the wheel. Nobody is running your show but you.

Let those Welcome To Reality comments ricochet right off you. It’s as good or as bad as you decide it is.

Does this sound like nothing more than positive thinking? Basically that’s all it is. But that’s a choice too. You’re not born a negative thinker or a positive thinker. You can certainly absorb the tendency from the family whose conversation you hear or the friends you spend time with. Before you know it, you’ve heard yourself say it so often, it’s a habit.

At some point, it was a choice you had. It’s still a choice you have.

>> cspics

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Happiness

Comments

3 Responses to “Welcome To Reality”

Susan on September 17th, 2008 8:58 pm

I live with someone who watches the news religiously and tends to get wrapped up in the negativity. He tends to rant about all that’s wrong (in his view) and doesn’t seem able to see what’s right. Your observations about life and our choosen responses to our experiences are right on the money (obviously, I agree with you). Thank you so much for putting your thoughts down do eloquently.

Susan
Christine Scaman on September 18th, 2008 5:47 pm

Susan,

It seems so harmless, doesn’t it, sitting down to watch TV in the evening? What could be bad about the news? Or a reality show?

I can see how TV is relaxing to people. But it’s such a one-way delivery that your brain just goes into blank mode, and it’s incredibly impressionable.

Negativity on TV is insidious. Being around negative people is the same way. Before you know it, you find yourself telling those same stories, using the same body language, adopting that suspicious, self-protective shell. It’s easy and it feels kind of juicy in a reactionary way.

I think it grows like an infection that you don’t know you have. Once you have awareness of it, you can evict it from your reality. Seeing the good is easy too.

Terrific comment. Thanks.
Kathryn on September 18th, 2008 8:34 pm

Amazing, I was on almost the same train of thougth earlier today, I’ll be married 23 years next month, and I was thinking about all of our ups and downs, trials, tribulations and BLESSINGS, and realized no matter what we have, how little or how much, at the end of the day-at the end of this life, he and I have each other – what more do we really need?