Constructing Reality

We each have our lives with its various constructs living in our cosy castles but what is it that gives us our strength? That keeps us going and gives a sense of purpose? In my case, strip away my dear Mr Doris, my kids, my family and my friends and what is there? Who am I then? There has to be something in each of us that gives us our own identity and reasons for being otherwise we are just empty shells slotting into a jigsaw, and should that jigsaw fall apart we could be awash without any anchor.

In my case, I feel that inside tiny me is a something that has always held on, through the tough and the alone times. That demanded that there should be justice in this world and always had hope that things should get better. In a way, a something that just never gave up. It is curious because although I had this sense of justice and of what is right, it was a voice that I carried for others, rarely for me but this year I am finding that justice voice for me too. Finally utilising its essential nature in ways that have surprised me but have been inconsequential in the scheme of things inasmuch as I opened my mouth on my account but the world did not fall in.

With the idea of our constructed realities it is like a skeleton of a building with a lift shaft. As we each go up and down to each floor, it is like each is a whole new plane of thought with different concerns and issues. For that period of time on that floor, for however long we are there, we are in that groove: sometimes stuck, sometimes floating free, whatever it is that is to be our experience. And it seems that if we do not handle things differently, or better, we are consigned to come back to those floors that create the most mayhem. Again and again and I wonder if in the next life too until we deal with things better.

There are silly things in my life I still have issues with such as some aspects of procrastination, or how I feel the world sometimes expects more of me than I can deliver. Stuff in my head that takes more time than it deserves and would be quicker to deal with the tasks in hand than worry about them. Then, there are those floors that are just complete travesties and tragedies for which I am grateful have not been my lot. We survive and we cope, or we don't. Those are the events outside of us that cut swathes through lives. The wars, the bombs, the murders, the accidents and so forth.

So what makes us survive? When there appears to be nothing else in life or it is all too much. There has to be just a smallest grain of hope. A hope that one day things will be better. Remembering that we are stuck on this floor at the moment but we will not always. The world is an amazing place. Bad things happen but it is a place of incredible beauty and awe. Human kind is amazing. We grow from just a simple egg and seed into this most complex bit of machinery that imagines structures and art and music. Green shoots and tiny flowers insist on growing from the most inhospitable side-walks or a rocky crevasse up a mountain. And whilst those little shoots continue to blossom there is always hope for us. Strip away those constructs, that plane of reality that insists this or that is important and let the core of who we are just be. We are vital just as we are.

It is eighteen days until the new year. This year I was big and bold and brave and did so very many things differently and can see my life has shifted gear after some years of being stuck. It is not all perfect and I have a journey to continue along but it feels like a good place to be. Any moment those ivory towers could be rocked and then I'd have to start all over again, but I hope not. There is much to be thankful for, even on those years I didn't feel things were going my way.