Version of Reality

It’s an odd experience, trying to sort truth from propaganda and outright lies because if one thing is true, the other thing can’t be, and the whole narrative we’re being told falls apart. If some of the “facts” we are given are fabricated, then obviously, we can’t use those facts as a basis for balancing what is real against what is not. Although it doesn’t make it so, I tend to believe that what is banned is in fact real because my blog was banned, and that sure is real and not spam or fake or whatever other rational FB used to ban it. And I tend to believe that banned stories are true, because if they were false, no one would care enough to ban them. (And if you think that the self-appointed gatekeepers of information have your best interests in mind, think again!)

If what we are learning about certain corrupt hack politicians is true, then it makes for a very scary future. In fact, the whole scenario of this election in the USA sounds so much like a farfetched political thriller, with the fate of world dependent on the outcome, that none of it seems real. And maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s all a play — or some sort of alternate reality — being enacted for our benefit.

So what is real? It comes down to what we can see out in the real world, not on news broadcasts (because those are horrendously biased), or in videos (because those can be falsified), or in photos (because of the ability of anyone to alter any photo). And it’s about what we hear in the real world, again, not from broadcasts, videos, etc.

So, this computer is real, as am I. The sun outside is real. The squirrel that is eating at the birdfeeder next door is real (though I’m sure the birds wished it weren’t).

In this version of reality, there are no politics, no lies or “false facts,” no grab for globalist power.

There’s just me and what I personally experience.

But when things are narrowed like that in a discussion of reality, we have to wonder if what we see, hear, touch, taste, smell is really real. The mind, apparently, has an infinite capacity for self-deception, especially in times of chaos and confusion. It can convince us that whatever reality it has conjured for us is in fact happening, when it might simply be our poor overworked brains trying to make sense of a senseless world. We also seem to come equipped with blinkers, which keep us from seeing that what is happening out in the world is actually happening to us.

So is anything real? On a certain level, of course, nothing is real. Everything comes down to various wavelengths or particles of energy that seem to disappear into nothingness the closer one looks. Our brains — themselves wavelengths or particles of energy — translate that energy into the reality it wants to feed us. Still, whatever the truth, I think we have to pretend that something is real.

Since I can’t verify that anything going on outside my personal range is actually happening, I choose to pretend that my senses are showing me a version of reality — the only reality — that is real and true.

***

“I am Bob, the Right Hand of God. As part of the galactic renewal program, God has accepted an offer from a development company on the planet Xerxes to turn Earth into a theme park. Not even God can stop progress, but to tell the truth, He’s glad of the change. He’s never been satisfied with Earth. For one thing, there are too many humans on it. He’s decided to eliminate anyone who isn’t nice, and because He’s God, He knows who you are; you can’t talk your way out of it as you humans normally do.”

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Here’s To a Life Of Insecurity, Uncertainty, Failure

Yesterday was a wonderful day. Not only did I have two separate and delicious get-togethers with good friends, I felt no sadness, no tears, no angst when I was alone again.

I seem to have turned a corner — maybe not with the sadness, because sadness seems to be a constant underlying theme of my life even when I am otherwise happy, but with the angst. At the moment, I feel good. Unconflicted. Accepting. Though to be honest, I don’t know what it is I am accepting. Maybe that uncertainty is an acceptable way of life — because, truly, any certainty we feel is a matter of hope over reality. That the unusual doesn’t usually happen helps fuel the fantasy of certainty, but anything can happen to any of us at any time.

A friend sent me the following text: So here’s to a life of insecurity, uncertainty, failure, and most of all adventure. And oh, that sounds so strangely wonderful! We tend to think that security, certainty, and success are all things to be sought after, but what if they aren’t? What if security lies in uncertainty and failure? What if certainty lies in failure and insecurity? What if success lies in failure, uncertainty, and insecurity?

I don’t know what succarouselcess is since it remains elusive. I don’t know what failure is, either, though I have suffered too much of it. Still, success sometimes brings unrealistic expectations, forces us into a role we aren’t comfortable with, or steals time from loved ones, and aren’t those all failures? Failure often brings knowledge of a sort, and isn’t truth a success?

Truth has always excited me, though the keys to life’s mysteries — life’s truths — seem out of reach. Each truth learned hints at greater truths, and so we truth seekers are always seeking. (Always failing, too, because truth can never be grasped.)

Although I miss my soul mate with all my mind and heart, when I am brutally honest with myself, I know we went as far as we could together in our search for truth. For us to have remained together would have stifled that glow of barely sensed knowledge, would have kept us tethered to ordinariness. But by his death, he took me to the ends of my reach, showed me emotions I didn’t know existed, let me feel the bonds of eternity and the bounds of the earth.

I sense something more for me in this life, sense . . . whatever it is that lies beyond the cone of my vision. I haven’t a clue how to move beyond my own grasp, though I sense that a life of security, certainty and success is not the way to do it. All of those are ties that bind, and since I am free and boundless for the first time in my life, I’m not about to tie myself in knots again, at least until life and age do it for me.

Sometimes I sense laughter deep within the universe. Sometimes I sense the playfulness that holds everything together.

Once a very long time ago when I was immeasurably young, my classmates were trying to read each other’s minds. They sat there, brows furrowed in concentration. My then best friend was one of the would-be-mind readers. I was bored with the whole thing, and played my own game of trying to break their concentration by shouting out gleefully anything I could think of. The gameplayers were so annoyed at me they blocked me out, so no one realized that I unwittingly shouted out the right answers whenever my friend was the one sending the thoughts.

So playfulness, laughter, uncertainty, insecurity — these are things to be gleefully and joyfully embraced. Oddly, I don’t know how to play, to be playful. Never did. I was a serious child, and except for moments here and there, I’m a serious adult. But seriousness will never get me what I want. Truth is a shy creature that can’t be hunted, only enticed with promises of play.

I’m being foolishly poetic, perhaps, but maybe, just maybe, I’m on to something. If nothing else, maybe I’ll learn to be playful.

***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, andDaughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.