- Logtar's Blog -

Perception tends to become reality. Lack of communication in human interactions speeds up that process exponentially. Most people only work on the realm of their own reality and forget to include the rest of the world when evaluating situations. Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes is an old proverb that seems to have been forgotten altogether.

Defining reality should not be a question for a movie to answer. I loved the movie The Matrix, but the notion of my reality being controlled by a computer is simply too far fetched. Spend enough time dealing with people and you will know that there is no machine powerful enough to handle the input from people’s skewed view of life. Including my own.

I have always liked religion because it has always created more questions for me rather than given me all the answers. I think its mostly due to free will and faith. I love both concepts and I think they are part of what defines reality for me. I have faith on a higher power while knowing that I have the free will to make choices. Destiny and butterfly effect are also very cool concepts to ponder upon when it comes to defining what our reality is.

To me reality is the collision of actions. Words collide and they cause feelings on people. You cannot see the feelings, but you can see the reactions. Reading people’s facial expressions is amazing. The genuine smile after someone tells a joke, the contortion of the face when a liar tries to bluff, The closing of an eyelid which releases sadness of a tear rolling down someone’s face.

When you are interacting with others, please try to take their reality into consideration. It might seem like the saddest or craziest reality, but if you don’t take their rules of play under consideration; communication will not be accomplished. I am amazed by how many only want to live in their little world. Opening up to others and visiting is half the fun this life has to offer.

When we are too close to change we rarely truly witness it. When we are around change, do we really see it, do we acknowledge it?

During my recent brain reading obsessions, a couple of books and a couple of dozen articles, I learned a theory about memory. I am no brain surgeon and even those dudes are still to some point guessing. It is believed that we don’t actually store memories like a picture does, but that every time we recall it, we then store our memory or recollection. This theory is used to explain how eye witness account can be tempered with or very inaccurate from the story being retold over and over. That memory can get pretty murky after a while and being chased by the neighborhood chihuahua can turn into being chased by a pack of wolves.

Recently I am also fascinated by how some people have “changed” and some have pretty much stayed the same after six years of being away from this area. I do consider the possibility that maybe I did not know some of them as well as I knew the ones that I see no change on. I am interested by this idea that people can change, and it seems like one of those forks on the road that you kind of have to pick one side or the other. You either believe people are capable of changing and the ones that don’t simply chose not to, or you believe people just can’t change and they are who they are.

One of the situations I am observing in one of my groups of friends has changed so much that I think its already fragmented beyond repair. Little clusters still hang out, but the group dynamics changed quite a bit due to one of the people just having a thirst for trouble. What is even more interested is that a similar situation with another group of friends was the complete opposite. The trouble maker is not a part of the group anymore and the group is as strong in bonds as it was before. I guess the one bad apple thing might have some truth to it.

Both situations can be seen from a different perspective and one group as the one that did not give up on the troublemaker and the other one that did give up on their “friend.”

When my family moved to the U.S. my Dad left all of his immediate family besides his wife and kids behind. He left a huge void there because he was involved in a lot of decision making and just keeping the overall family structure going. Some of the things that happen after we left might not have happen if he was there. Was he selfish because he wanted his kids to have more opportunities in life by moving to where his wife’s family was at? I will never know if the situations that have unfolded since then would have been the same or not without his presence.

The choice of leaving Chicago six years ago had a lot to do with personal reasons. I thought back then that a change of scenery was just what I needed. The jury is still out on that being the right decision and the “no regret” part of me tells me that it lead me to eventually move to KC and finding my wife. It is still hard to know that when my Mom did get really sick last year I was not around and not having enough vacation made it hard for me to get away. This time the reason to move was to be closer to family, sure the job offered help but I’ve hand plenty of those before.

I am not sure if people change or not. I personally think that we are all capable of self improvement, but there are core things about who we are that cannot be changed. They are part of our nature. I do want to be smarter about witnessing change on people and relationships and learning how to learn from it. I also wish that I could be in several places at once. I would love to be able to celebrate Daniel’s birthday with him today, even though I have learned through our relationship that we can be witnesses to change and part of someone’s life even though we are not physically there.

Still the question remains, do we really witness change?