Dear, Dear Diary

Dear, Dear Diary,

You know I do some of my best thinking in the shower, where there is no distraction, only the sound and feel of hot water and steam.  Nothing there but soft light and the water, washing the world away, washing all of the little parasitic thoughts that constantly consume my mind, down my back in rivulets.  'I need to get the oil changed in the car, I need to call this friend, I need to go visit that friend, I wonder if I'll have time to clean out the closet in the guest bedroom this weekend, I hope my brother is doing well... and his kids... I better call, must get a birthday card and paper towels, and on... and on...

And there they go... sliding down the drain, and my mind clears and it almost feels like it's spreading, growing, right outside of my head, and I can hear and think from the inside out, instead of thinking about all the information coming in - I am able to focus on information going out.

This morning I breathed in the steam, let the world go away and started wondering about reality.

I think we are all in our own little reality, and all of our realities have overlapping areas where we share a cohesive reality; that realm where we can communicate and understand each other, for the most part.  There is no normal and I think, no definite reality - because where is that bar set? Who could set it? Who could say 'this is reality and that is not' because they're looking at it from their own perspective, from their own mind, lifestyle and their own reality. 

Albert Einstein had a fascinating reality.  A different reality.  Nikola Tesla.  Leonardo da Vinci.  Marilyn Monroe. Stephen King. That guy on the sidewalk with the guitar and the hat filled with loose change and a dollar bill.  The little girl sitting in that desk at the school, staring out the window and finding herself somewhere completely separate from the shared reality of her desk in her classroom. The pastor of the church down the street. The woman who is beaten by an angry man nearly every day. The single parent struggling to raise children on their own. The performer who spends their life on Broadway under a spotlight. The politician...

I wondered how far realities stretch... there are some people who are so far gone from our shared reality that they are labeled insane; unfit for society.  What a different world is their reality! How far do they all go; our realities... and how much are really shared? Is there more of one than there is of the other... our own individual realities and our shared realities? If we are in one more often than we are in the other, how does it shape our lives? Is it easy for most people to keep that line between the two, drawn - to keep them separated? Do they blend and mesh for everyone?

How much do we have control over, and how much can we change? What about what we can't see and those things that aren't tangible?

I know I could change a lot of my shared reality; and I could change quite a bit of my own individual reality... what I think, what I believe, what I say, how I live, what I do, what dreams I allow myself to indulge in, and what I refuse to accept in my life. 

Every single one of those actions and indeed, even every inaction, has that ripple effect that changes our lives and the lives of those around us (and then in turn the lives around them... so many degrees of separation later), and really impresses the significance of the incomprehensibly dynamic world of controlled chaos that we live in. 

...and that's about when the hot water ran out.