Perception vs. Reality

I have a problem. "HA!", you say, "and this is news how?" or do you? maybe you say "Oh cool! Chris has figured out something else about himself!"

That's kinda my point. Perception vs. Reality. Perception is like a pair of glasses with multiple, multi-color, variable prescription lenses. Looking at Reality through these special glasses can warp, distort, discolor, etc what Reality actually is. Not having a clear true view of Reality and relying on our Perception of it can lead us to unnecessary anxiety or irrational expectations.

So, in the example above, trying to guess what people would say is based on Perception. The first "negative" response is based on the Perception that I talk about my problems alot, which probably annoys people since that's all I seem to talk about, so therefore they would probably react in a manner similar to what I put. The second "positive" response is based on a different Perception that everybody enjoys reading my posts about my personal struggles and that they'd be happy that I've made a new "discovery". Which one's right? Which one's wrong? Does it matter?

Well, let's take a step back and look at the Reality. This is the tricky part, at least for me. This requires you to be able to recognize when you still have the Perception glasses on, and recognize when you still have one of it's distorting lenses flipped down over your eye. I've been trying to work on this since last weekend, and I've noticed times where I thought I'd flipped up all of the lenses and was seeing the Reality, when actually there was still a couple layers of slightly distorting lenses flipped down that were tweaking my view of Reality just slightly. (note: that whole last sentence was one massive analogy, but I didn't feel like putting ""'s around all the "facets" of it. seriously, I love ""'s, and can't seem to stop "using" them)

Anywho, back to looking at the Reality from the first example. Let's try to find the Reality. First off, I can't predict whether anyone will read this post or not. so how can I try to predict how people will respond to it? And even if, for some reason, I was able to predict that x number of people were going to read this post, how could I truly predict how they would react to it? In Reality, should I even give a crap about whether or not anybody reads this? No. I should be writing these for myself, and if someone happens to read it, so be it :) and if they happen to take something from it, so be it :) and if they think I'm full of BS and should stop writing about my crap, so be it :) The Reality is, it's not all that important anyways.

So, there it is, that's what's been on my mind lately. Trying to make myself recognize what is my Perception of a person/situation/event vs. what's the actual Reality of it.