‘The REALITY of Changing Knickers’

What does ‘Reality’ actually mean? - You may also be wondering what it has to do with knickers (fair enough!)

The Dictionary says - “A thing that is actually experienced or seen, in contrast to what people might imagine”

People throw this word around a lot. And so do I. A lot.

But here is the thing that keeps nagging at me. Do any of us actually agree on what it means? Because if your reality is built from your experiences, and mine is built from mine … we’re essentially walking around in completely different worlds while pretending we’re in the same one 🤔 Sounds about right! … Stay with me here …

Open your mind, get some peripheral vision, and step into the world of possibilities. (Yes that means you have to stop scrolling for a minute. This is worth it. Probably.)

The dictionary helpfully offers us some examples. Let’s have a look shall we? ….

“Will time travel ever become a reality?” -

(Well of course I was going to use that one!)

And for some people it already is. Now before you roll your eyes and mutter that’s just the mentally ill or pants on fire liars … here is the uncomfortable bit. You DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW THAT 😳

That’s your filter doing the thinking. That’s your reality belief deciding what’s valid and what isn’t. Bit cheeky of it really.

Another dictionary example -

“Money is the key to turning dreams into reality”

Yes seriously it’s an example! I’d love to meet the person who put that in as an example, but not sure I’d come across them in my reality. Most people’s dreams have nothing to do with money in my reality. What a terrible example. (I liked the one about the time travel though 👍🏽)

Here’s another - “Politicians should not ignore economic realities”

Which ones? Whose? I guarantee there are as many versions of economic realities as there are people arguing about it on the internet at this very moment. So roughly seventeen million.

Here’s the actual point (finally)

We use words like reality, truth, and fact as though they’re set in stone. Like we all downloaded the same instruction manual at birth. But we didn’t. We each got a bespoke edition, edited by our upbringing, our experiences, our culture, our nervous system , and frankly whatever mood we were in that Tuesday.

This matters more than ever right now, because the world has become genuinely overwhelming. There are so many layers of reality stacked on top of each other that it feels like living in a block of flats where every floor is playing different music at full volume. And yet we are all in the same building.

So maybe the most radical thing we can all do is STOP ASSUMING that we KNOW someone else’s truth. Stop deciding that because something isn’t in your reality, it can’t be in theirs. We are all just processing our experiences as fast as we can, updating our version of truth as we go.

‘Changing your mind about what’s real these days is like changing your knickers’ some people do it daily, some people resist it for longer than advisable (I can’t stop to think about that! 🙈) And everyone secretly judges everyone else’s choices while pretending they don’t.

The reality? Only YOU can create yours. And the sooner we all get comfortable with that for ourselves and each other, the less exhausting this shared hallucination we call life is going to be.

Let’s love each other no matter what reality we live in. We are sharing the same building after all.

thanks if you’ve come this far! Your attention span is better than mine!

✨ Lyra ✨💕