Reality Wins
I have been thinking lately about my relationship to reality. Maybe I have been spending too much time by myself. Anyway, this is my conclusion: I am way happier if I pay attention to and accept reality regardless of how it fits in with my wants or needs.
Say I hear a funny noise from my car. I know it probably means something is going bad, but I don’t want to think about it because I fear it will cost money I don’t have. So, I drive it until it breaks. Now I have a bigger problem.
Or: I used to know a guy who was having chest pains for a while, but he didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to worry his family; and didn’t go to the doctor because he was afraid of what the doctor would say. We know this because he told us after his first heart attack. His second one killed him.
My personal favorite: The world seems to be full of people calling me or emailing me trying to pull some scam or other. Either they want money or my personal information. So, here’s a few pieces of reality: Social Security does not call people. Medicare is a program administered by the Social Security Administration, not an organization that calls people. There is no person living or dead in the US or any other country that is going to give me millions of dollars if only I forward my banking information. I am sick of people lying to me to get something.
One group of people notorious for lying to get something is politicians. This group is so notorious for lying to get people’s vote that many people don’t vote. They think it doesn’t matter because they are all crooks anyway. That notion is not based on reality. I believe there are many people in politics who sincerely want to help people. Just as there are many who only want the power and money that goes with it.
How do you tell the difference? If someone tells you what you want to hear just to get your vote, chances are they are lying to you. If someone tells you about a problem we all have, even if you don’t like it, then talks about possible solutions—even if you don’t like the solutions; they are probably telling the truth. I find I am happier if I vote for the truth tellers.
A good example of what happens when you elect liars is what happened on January 6. The Liar-in-Chief told all his followers the election was stolen, in spite of the fact that there was absolutely no evidence to support that notion. Then he invited his supporters to Washington, told them to fight like hell and to march on the Capitol “stop the steal”. People died because of a lie. We almost lost our democracy because of a lie.
Sometimes I get worried that the liars and bullies are going to win and make life for the rest of us miserable. Then I remember one irrefutable truth: Reality always wins in the end. If you step off a cliff, you will fall—no matter how much you wish you could fly. So, listen to what people say with a critical ear, check what they say against what you know to be true. Don’t give money or personal information to people who call out of the blue. Don’t jump off a cliff even if you want to fly (planes still work just fine). And don’t vote for liars—but do vote. If you don’t vote for the other guy, the liars will win and muck things up for the rest of us. That’s just the plain reality of things.
