Buck up.

Let's face it, reality really sucks sometimes. Shit happens: your favorite sweater gets torn, you lose your favorite slippers, whatever. Occasionally, a person needs to grab a pint of ice cream, watch Mean Girls seven times and cry at things for no reason. Fine.

One of the things I'm always kicking around in my mind is how to live an authentic life. I want to know how I can cut past the crap and just 'be'. Trying to work through this in my head has led me to a few interesting (and that's putting it lightly...) places.

Some of these places have been dark and intriguing. The ones that have claimed these adjectives have also been some of the most terrifying. Reality is tenuous; people on the edge of letting go do scary things.

I've come across a number of self proclaimed gurus along the way who claim that reality is all perception. I can't help but question the oxymoron here. Reality, by definition, is "the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them".

Reality is a thing. I know this because there are in fact large scale events that affect large numbers of people regardless of their 'beliefs'. In fact, the only example I can think of that would give evidence to a certain belief system or organized religion being favored by a natural disaster would be the story of the Plagues of Egypt.

Even then, though, if you read how people talk about religion, it is strangely reminiscent of the way fanfic-writing-uber-nerds argue about what happened in one of their favorite series vs. a spinoff of their favorite series (Think Dr. Who vs. Torchwood.. kind of) so I'm not so sure about that being the right thing, either... I don't claim to know anything about religion.

I've come to the conclusion that it's not reality that matters. No matter what you believe, breaking your leg is still breaking your leg. It's how you're going to choose to react that will make a difference. Yes things are hard, and yes it would be easier to not do them, but where is the fun there? That doesn't seem like living.

It's time to be self-aware, and realize the things that we want to put first. Let's eliminate fear as a reason to not do things. I can tell you for a fact that the things I didn't try made me feel infinitely worse than the things at which I failed.

Here is my promise to me to stop over-analyzing& assume a positive attitude, even in the face of adversity. From here on out, I'm going to get out of my head, and really live. What promise are you going to make to yourself?

Let's live better.