Rediscovering the power of being human.

Article Image: 

Why I think those who tell you to "get real" when you strive to achieve your dreams are the ones who should get real.

If you have ever dreamed and talked ambitiously about what you want to accomplish in life you may have probably encountered people who would tell you to "get real" or "get serious" telling you that you're living in the clouds and should get back down to earth and into the real world.

There is a specific type of people who would tell these sorts of things to anyone who dares to set high goals. They perceive themselves to be the realists, well grounded in the real world. Their biggest achievement usually seems to be that they survived. They have a job they don't necessarily love, but to them that's "reality". Work is supposed to be tough, they say, something you hate, but have to do.

They have a typical family that is just "ok". They love each other, or so they believe. After all, it would be a disaster if it should ever turn out to be otherwise. But of course, passive aggression disguised as "all in good fun" jokes containing "harmless" jibes at their spouses' flaws are all fair game, especially while doing it with like minded friends at a bar or during lunch breaks. It can't be any better, they believe, it's all just the way it is and the way it's supposed to be. They hold to many of their relationships not so much because they feel happy about them, but because it's become an obligation and an expectation.

Particularly bad cases of these "realists" would go as far to say, on a regular basis, that "life is suffering". With such a mentality, is there any wonder that they would look at a dreamer and would be achiever as a fool? How dare one try to make life easy and pleasant? "Look at all those flaws", they say, "that's why you'll never get where you're going!"

Are these people really "realists"?

If you can act you can change reality.

Some people, in response to this depressing type of people, tend to say that no such thing as a real world exists and it's all the way you make it. An extreme interpretation of that would be that you create your own reality, literally, with your thoughts. And then a bunch of people come along for a huge feelgood fest that is a movie "The Secret", thinking that they manifest money and car spaces out of thin air.

However, I think that's another extreme. I think there is such a thing as the real world, an objective reality not manifested by any particular human mind. The question is, is this reality really so negative as the so called "realists" would have it be?

Well, let's look at one discipline which has so far managed to tell us most about it: science. It would appear, from science, that reality operates rather consistently in accordance to a set of principles we keep discovering and proclaiming as "natural laws". We are, of course, subjected to those laws. Successful evolution of our technology and relative living standards in technologically advanced civilizations would prove that it is possible to apply what we learned about these laws to modify parts of reality to suit us.

If we can adapt reality to our needs and desires without actually violating it's fundamentals then these so called "realists", who seem to be stuck to the assumption that "reality is what it is and you can do nothing about it", aren't really realists at all. There is a process called action and reaction, or causality and we are beings capable of producing action. Thus we most certainly always and so long as we can think and act, can do something about it!

In that case, optimists are more realistic than pessimists because it is optimists who are always more likely to think that they can make things better. They're thus more likely to dream and achieve.

How you perceive and think influences how you act

While we may not necessarily create reality itself by our thoughts alone, perception is still everything to us. You can color every situation in many various ways and that will determine your actions and to some extent consequences. Two people stuck in an elevator are in precisely the same objective real situation, yet one person might be hurled into the corner possessed by panic whereas another may be looking for clues to a solution of their predicament.

Who do you think is more likely to find an escape? The answer is a no brainer. The person who panicked and immediately thought "we're gonna die" has pretty much shut all of its capacity for positive action. Since action is necessary to cause consequences, positive or negative, the panicking person is doomed. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

A person who looks for solutions and believes there must be a way out is in a mental mode that actively scans for possibilities and opportunities for action that could cause desired consequences.

Self professed "realists" described above would probably panic or at least just cynically sit there savoring the ending moments of their suffering life. Instead of actually looking at reality for solutions they're predisposed to stay blinded by their self-perpetuating fear.

Conclusion: Reality is Gooood

It would seem that optimists and people who believe in the possibility of achieving great things and making the world a better place are actually being more realistic. The reason is that unlike cynical pessimists they recognize a very real power of cause and effect in the way it shapes reality. Nothing that is real would be what it is if it wasn't caused by a particular action. Most importantly they realize that by having the capacity to act, and act willfully and with intelligent deliberation, they then have the same capacity to change reality.

So to an ambitious optimist the world around them is a sort of a canvas. The right course of action can have the right, indeed desired, consequences - the achievement of their goals.

A pessimist on the other hand either seems to see the world as stuck in time, in the present robbed of its future, as if action doesn't exist, or they simply deny their own ability to think and act towards the achievement of their own desired consequences (goals). This is irrational and quite unrealistic. Even if you don't think, and act impulsively, it's improbable that your acts will always lead to bad consequences. But if you can act intelligently and deliberately, adapting each action as you observe the consequences, so they cause better consequences, how can you deny yourself this basic human power?

Of course, if you deny that you even have it, you're the one who should "get real", "get serious" and "get back to the real world".

Next time someone pesters you with such defeatist, self-denying attitude, you tell them that!

Image by *D a r i n k a*.