The Nature of Reality
Why does reality never please us like possibilities
can? Why do only perfect situations and beautiful ideals console us? Reality
can be frightening, it can be hateful. It can hurt you, it can make you sorry
you ever wished for whatever you ended up getting. But there is a strange
power, a powerful fascination that exists in looking at the web of life. How
tiny changes, all the broken things which seem so repulsive and all the seemingly
perfect ones, add up to a world that is incredibly diverse. To some, this world
just seems horrid. And yet to others, it makes them fall more in love with life
every day. Is the difference here merely a concern of circumstances, or is
there something fundamental that we could change in our viewpoints that would
allow us to view the world differently?
I personally think it’s the latter. With every new
discovery, every new interpretation of ideas that have been around for
millenniums, it’s becoming more and more clear that even the concept of reality
itself might be subjective. Perceptions are all that matter. Something which is
an unspoken fact of life to some, may be a farce to someone else. It all
depends on what you believe and what you understand of what others believe.
Take the idea that the Sun revolves around the Earth,
that is the geocentric model of the solar system that many ancient philosophers
and astronomers like Aristotle and Ptolemy proposed. For over 1500 years, this
idea was taken for granted. Every religion, especially Christianity, felt that
this anthropocentric view was useful to them and granted that it was correct.
It helped to sate the egos of many theologists to think that man, the most
important creation of God, occupied a central place in the universe. It was not
until 1543 that anyone even dared to suggest an alternate model, namely, that
the Earth revolved around the Sun. And even then, it took many years and the
work of many a scientist, some of which were condemned as heretical for their
efforts, to bring the Copernican theory of the solar system into popular
belief. Such an obvious truth to some, and yet clearly a farce to others.
So, what can we conclude from this? It’s clear that
our preconceptions and our ideas influence how we experience the same events.
It’s not possible to alter in which situations we are born, so we bear no
responsibility for the same. But there are things in life that we do bear
responsibility for, such as the choices we make, the opportunities we miss, and
the way we live our lives. In these cases, it’s not the way the world treats us
that is to blame, but simply us ourselves. Circumstances certainly affect how
we live, because other people do affect you, as do your surroundings, and not
everything depends on you. You are meant to meet some people, and to lose
others. Some things are bound to happen, and there’s only so much you can do
about that. But we always have a choice to make, that could change our lives
and that could put us on the paths we wish to take.
After all, life can knock us down, but in the end, it
is if, and how, we get up that decides what we can make of our lives.
