Reality isn't perfect.
Though sometimes we twist our perception of it.
I tried to wrap my head around the concept of infinity the other day. It occurred to me that it's not just a really long ass time, or a mother fucking shit load of space, but infinity. Along with scaring the pants off of me, it got me thinking.
As a child, my head was filled with dreams, fantasies, and adventures. I haven't changed much, and I don't necessarily intend to. I think our delusions are just as important as knowing the absolute truth. As humans we're so limited. The universe is infinite. The thought is frightening. We are so small. How can we hope to understand every truth, and ever truly grasp reality?
The pursuit of knowledge, and truth is a noble one. I once thought I was brave to turn away from illusions like religion. Now I'm truly afraid of the truth. I think I'm smarter for it. Who wouldn't be afraid? I can better respect the smart people who cloud themselves in fantasies for comfort. I understand that they may have faced to enormity of existence and had to fall back on religion, pr small mindedness as a safety net. (Don't get me wrong, those aren't the only ways to keep yourself from falling off.)
All our lives are, all they ever can be, are daydreams, and imperfect ones at that. We paint little walls around our world so that we can handle it.
For a while I've seen myself as the person who did not fall from God's grace, but the one who jumped from it. I thought myself brave for throwing myself off such a precipice. But can I handle the truth either? One day I'd like to accept how little I am. I'd like to accept how infinitesimally tiny I am, and how little I matter. I cried when I realized for the first time how frightening the concept of "everything" was. I'm not very strong, but I'm smart enough to have tried to stretch my mind so much that I scared myself with my findings. And no matter how big I will ever imagine the universe to be, it will only be a minute fraction of what it is.
Being daunted doesn't make me weak or stupid, it merely shows how much better I understand then before. I was so naive. I thought my place in the sum of existence was somewhat substantial. I thought I mattered. I felt pretty important.
I have to matter. I need to. I can't function without thinking I do.
I wonder if anyone could keep themselves in perspective like that all the time.
Having been born with a big imagination helped me partly to conceive of how big everything is, but it also allows me the most detailed escapes. All we know, think and experience is what we choose to let in. There is simply too much that exists for us to not filter reality.
I want to work towards accepting reality, even when it scares me.
The irony lies within the fact that I'm dedicating my life to creating escapes. The same imagination, and the same mind that wants to venture out, greatest passion is creating alternative realities. I've always liked Ozzy's song "I'm just a dreamer". He hit the nail on the head. We are all 'just dreamers'. Whether you alter your reality by the same means Ozzy did, or whether you bury yourself in religion, or in your own tiny and limited life (like I do), we are all just dreaming our lives away.
(The run-on sentences bother me too.) How tiny was that thought? How little does anything really matter? The very act of bawling upon realizing how big everything is, is in itself nothing important.
Knowing with so much more certainty that we choose our reality I feel I have a little more and a little less control. I love the fact that I can entertain myself with make belief, however a newly formed life goal of mine is to accept reality as best I can.
I have so far to go.
Not only do I have that to contend with now, but I have to add in the fact that even while taking my last breath I still won't realize just how far I have to go.
Like, an infinitely far way to go.
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