Meet My Stare
Is what you see the truth? Or just your truth?
Optimism Vs reality, my truth Vs your truth seems like a deluded exploration of a story with no end. Just the wearing cycle of life, endlessly repeated, with no tangible outcome.
Being caught in this constant struggle, there seems to be no middle ground. No seeming safety of a no man's land, which can offer an eerie escape from the constant fatigue of battle. You are either labeled and accepted as optimistic or shunned for the fear of the fragile reality you expose and labeled a realist.
This battle plays out deep inside the recesses of my mind. I don't belong to either camp, as both feel far too one-dimensional for my liking; maybe that is the optimist in me, or perhaps it's the realist?
From what I have witnessed, to be a popular version of an optimist, you must embrace an almost fairytale existence where even humanity's worst atrocities have a more significant optimistic upside. On the other hand, to live every day indulging in the world's painful realism is to be viewed as a pessimist with a bleak and unwavering view of the world.
So, where does the reality lie, and why does it even matter? The unspoken reality of our murky existence lies as always somewhere between the two extremes. Where the worst can be absorbed and hope found and where the best can be experienced, and fault observed.
The observational middle ground free from the situational expectation, imposing a tainted gaze bound to disappoint. But all of this fades into insignificance when considering what having a predetermined view, either optimistic or realistic, really achieves.
It means that you run the risk of not learning all the essential lessons of the now; a confined view of reality, influenced by rigid constraints. Depending on your beliefs, your steaks in the ground, you will view the now with the hope of tomorrow or the pain of the past.
Both are the opposite side of the same coin, seen through your maybe unknown expectations, custom fit for the life story you have currently bought into, the operating system that is controlling you. In the end, it is the same now, but both outlooks can distort and influence what is really happening.
A cry for help could be viewed as an emotional breakthrough, surfacing anger, or just a cry for help. A burst of anger could be a traumatic breakthrough, an overzealous reaction, or just an explosion of anger.
But while we always try to find greater meaning in every moment of our being, we are, in many ways, succumbing to a life lived, embracing the supporting stories that have lead us here, that hold us here.
A life lived running to a comfortable reality of our emotional making, escaping the very moment that may teach us to stand back and view both sides of the coin in an attempt to find the optimism in reality and the reality in the optimism.