Our perception is our reality, right? Or does our reality
skew our perception?
I go with our perception is our reality. Oftentimes, we
operate in the frame of what we perceive to be going on. We have all heard the
saying, “Hindsight is 20/20.” Meaning, if you had known all the pieces of the
facts in the beginning, then maybe a different choice would have been made.
That different choice would have been made because your perception of the issue
(or whatever you were facing) would have been different.
As a society, we have become addicted to highly
sensationalized moments. We crave it in our news, TV shows and movies, magazines,
books, music, social media and just about everything we come into contact with.
We crave it and if it’s not present, then we are upset about how boring it is. Have
we considered how this is shaping our perspective? How these sensationalized moments
are shaping the way we define news, life, peace, love, politics, values, morals
or lifestyles?
We have made celebrities lives’ an important part of our
business and feel the need to become so consumed with their personal lives, how
they live, what they buy, and then we try to compete with their lifestyles. When
you take a step back, that’s the laughable part. We, majority of us, have significantly
less than a celebrity yet we are spending our disposable income on material
things that we see the celebrities with. As adults, we have now made choices to
copy this lifestyle that we do not always have the capital for, to pacify us
and have twisted it to begin to believe that “this” will make us feel better,
more beautiful….more complete.
And in the meantime, we’ve shifted our culture. In the
wrong direction (at least in my opinion). Now, I don’t feel that everything has
shifted in the wrong direction….just a few things. Hear me out. We have more “reality”
shows that are so far from the truth that we live on a day to day basis. And
trust, I’m not judging. I’ve always said “reality shows” are my guilty
pleasure. I don’t have any drama going on so it’s interesting to me to see what
others have going on. But, when I took a moment to think about it, it was shaping
my perception. Even though I wasn’t living it or experiencing it, I begin to
slowly shift and notice that every moment that was peaceful was all of the
sudden “boring.” Uh oh…..I’d now joined the 2LiveCrew and needed that sensationalized
fix.
And the sad thing about that fix is, it’s not just in our
reality shows. It’s in the news, we take it to work, we pass it along to our
children, we infuse it into our relationships – business, personal, family, friendships,
spiritual, and intimate relationships….we have made a culture of it. Even
something as simple as our social media accounts reflect it. We skip over the “boring”
posts. We have become infatuated with celebrity breakups. We take them
personally. This is probably the dumbest thing to me, I’m sorry….but I’m not
sorry. I've seen people UPSET about a breakup between two celebrities they've
never met. And I’m looking around like, “am I the alien here?” First, a break
up, especially a divorce, is hard as hell to deal with. Then throw in being put
in the public eye. Most of us who have had a heartbreak, break up, or divorce
have wanted to BURY ourselves underneath the covers for days, weeks, even
months. I do not even want to imagine what it would be like to go thru it
publicly. Yet, as they do, we become judge and jury as to “what happened in
that private relationship.” We have made it our business to mind everyone else’s
business…but our own.
And so here we are, our perception
of life, love, business, and our morals have shifted. Our perception of what
love should look like has become so sensationalized…there’s 50 million
Pinterest pins, Facebook posts, Instagram pictures, and tweets about “what real
love should look like.” Yet, we haven’t realized that we've taken intimate and
private moments and have showcased them to tell people if YOUR love isn't like
this….well, then it’s not love. We have taken SINGLE moments of success and
told people if YOUR success doesn't follow this plan and timeline, well….then
you’re losing. We've taken our child’s accomplishments and shouted that if YOUR
child can’t do what mine can do, welp…..maybe you can get a refund. (Lol,
sorry, had to throw that in there. We all know we can’t get refunds on these
kiddos!). We have encouraged uniformity when it does not apply. We have
convinced people that weight loss, love, success, happiness, great kids, a
wonderful life, a fat bank account can all be achieved with these (insert a
random number) few steps. The most important steps we've eliminated are time, hard work, patience and finding our own path to the things in life we desire. We've tried to sell the idea that everything is cookie cutter and we can achieve it if we follow the exact steps someone else traveled.
That is not life. This is not
life. Life has some boring moments. It has some still moments. Yes, celebrate
the hell outta of those great moments. But live life realistically. Nope, we
will not all be successful in every area of life at every moment. We will not
have the most well behaved kids who excel in everything they start….well, ya’ll
won’t but I will (just kidding). LOL. No, our relationships will not mirror a
fairytale. And sometimes bad things will happen….you can’t always be on top.
But our attitude, patience, work ethic, character and ability to center and
balance ourselves is what will get us thru the journey. We need to slow down
and realize that everything we come in contact with – social media, books,
magazines, news, tv, movies, our circles of influence, work, church, everything
– influences our perception. And the question we should be asking is “Am I on
my over-sensationalized fix or am I filtering what I see, hear and am exposed
to so that it feeds my soul, spirit, and my emotional and mental states?”
Live, laugh, love….and enjoy
every day of this life. You only get one.
