Thursday, April 1, 2010

Not Real

I sit in my semi - comfy, brown, normal rocking chair. I look at my grandfather watching a program on TV as a man from the music video sings with passion to the audience, “this is what people want... to dance and sing and be merry! This is reality guys, and if you don’t change your marketing procedures, no one will listen to you!!” Rolling my eyes I think… “What if this life is not reality? What if true reality is that which I cannot see? What if my life were different than what I perceive to be reality? What if the daily reality I see -- with my little raccoon eyes, is not a valid picture of reality at all? Reality is something I cannot comprehend. Reality comprehends me.

Reality comprehends me because reality is nothing I can obtain or grasp. It has understood my plight long before I came into existence. Reality in it’s purest form is by definition… the after life; a circumstance that lives and breaths -- a place, a word that isn’t a word at all… it’s a place full of life! It’s a spiritual area… a moment of eternity. Call it heaven? Call it truth for a moment. Call reality a sparkle in a child’s eye. Call it a belief in love or the fulfillment of a medium rare steak. Reality was there before I was born… I promise you… It understands us more than we understand ourselves. It’s an incredible creature we cannot see.

What if reality is not what I see, and only what I believe from hearing and trusting? What if reality and the truth of reality is something I cannot understand or see? What if? What if there is a God I cannot control? To not control something? Oh, God forbid! What if reality had nothing to do with temporal morality? What if morality though, has everything to do with ONLY eternity? Am I over spiritualizing? Would I matter, if the reality we see in this life from material things is, in its very nature—only the taste of spiritual heavens in the next life? If so, then reality is truth we choose to block out on a daily basis, through covering up feelings by temporal enjoyments or merely what we perceive to be truth in our daily lives.

What if the woman next to me is more a part of me than I realize? She is me. She is me? She has the same worries, same struggles, fears and likes. She enjoys the comfort of good food, same standard of music likings, loves to read and write, likes chex mix, desires to eat healthy yet busts it with a burger sometimes, really enjoys eclectic middle names, latte’s with no sugar, dry salads, dark red wines, working out, hates sitting down, and loves for the poor deeply.

“The very thing that I once thought made me unique makes me like everyone else. We are all the same in reality with skin to cover this reality. ”

What a paradox? To feel unique as a human, yet know we are similar and in reality all the same...destined to go to true reality. To covet similarity and common ground, yet desiring independence and want to “feel unique and special” depending how our passions guide us.

We assume that those who have ‘made it,’ in life have it all together. Reality cries out from the street and says…. No one knows. The truth is crying out yet we choose to run from it desiring uniqueness in our own nature -- which is pride.

I look up; my grandpa stretches out his toes. He is tired and getting older. He might think ‘what an interesting program on TV!’ Is he watching this to drown out his sorrow and pain he feels from his late wife’s death? Does he truly enjoy watching this tiring and annoying television show? Really, reality?

“Truth and reality are connected in almost a marriage relationship. Reality is not what I see, but what I know will come. Truth is what I do not see. Truth is what I cannot understand. Truth is a life after I am dead. Truth is the next life. So, what is important? Seeking others in the truth of who they will be, not how they see themselves right now. If we see truth in others as the finished work, then we will see them as a beautiful, incredible individuals with potential to always grow and thrive. We will see others not as objects, but as true loving friends who always tell the truth. To desire to walk in constant surrender of those who are in our face daily.

So, what is truth and reality in the temporal? Allowing God to posses you with the reality of a next life. Allowing your neighbor the love and respect you will one day show them in a life after this. Loving the truth of the person you do not know in the car next to you. Loving the truth about the loneliness of this life as well. Loving, that we are all in this thing we entitle with such a simple and extremely under-appreciated word… “life.” We all have felt the pain and sting of hardship in one way or another, whether it be growing pangs or physical ailments. Mental philosophical hardships or monthly gym fees! From the struggle of spending too much money on trivial enjoyments... while really wanting to save it. These things we worry about don’t really matter because in reality -- we are all in heaven already. This earthly life is only a dot in the string of dots to come.

An interesting thought, considering we cannot ‘see’ eternity… only know it is truthful reality based upon belief.

I get up; I stumble softly over the shoe in front of me, as I walk out of my scene of ambiguous thought to physical reality. “Ouch, that toe again! I always stub the same toe…” I pause, laugh in my heart a bit and think, “how wonderful it is that we all have stubbed our toes at different moments in time—yet all we see and think at that moment is how we feel.” In eternal reality we all enjoy the same things, love the same foods in different forms, hate the pain of toe-stubbing and recognize the uniqueness of each person and the potential he or she offers. What a beautiful confusion, what joyous bewilderment, what an illusion of certainty!!

Laughing, I consider how I love the similarity of humans, all of us living on the same ground. Building houses for ourselves on the top of it yet segregating ourselves...for no reason at all. Believing that ‘my life,’ is to have a house of my own, a cute dog and a cup of ice cream every once in a while. However, in truth… these things are what we all desire, yet ultimately to help others… the issue is that we cannot do it on our own.


We are all the same, and its time to recognize our similarities. We all struggle with the same things in different forms. What we choose to do with these differences is up to us. How we choose to act the next time we stub our toes, get pulled over and have coffee with a friend is up to us? Will we enjoy it, knowing that in a few short years this 'dot' we call life will be a 'string of dots,' in the next? Will we live in right reality or only think about ourselves? Reality is something I cannot understand. Reality is something that understands me.

peace, Davy Nicole

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