“People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don’t dream at all.”
-John Steinbeck, from The Winter of Our Discontent
Last week, I published a piece recognizing one’s difficulty owning and expressing their reality as a core symptom of codependency that we almost never consider. I’ve found it to be true that failing to recognize my reality will prevent me from having the type of life I want. Denying reality – seeing it but refusing to acknowledge it – yields nothing but dysfunction.
While it’s important we see life as it is – that we face reality, once we do, we have the power to create something better. We can create a different, better reality.
We have options. We can pretend a problem does not exist, or we can find a solution to it.
It’s the difference between pretending an obstacle isn’t there and refusing to let it hold us back.
We can choose to remain a victim of circumstance, or we can create our own reality.
Glossary of Feelings entry X
Gobsmacked (adjective)
overwhelmed with wonder, surprise, or shock : ASTOUNDED
This Week in History
March 10, 1528 - Akechi Mitsuhide, samurai who assassinated daimyō Oda Nobunaga, was born in Tara Castle, Mino Province, Japan.
March 11, 1789 - Benjamin Banneker and Pierre Charles L'Enfant began to lay out Washington, D.C.
March 12, 1837 - British poet laureate Robert Southey writes in reply to 20-year-old Charlotte Brontë, "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be."
March 13, 1905 - Exotic Dancer, Courtesan, and German Spy Mata Hari first performs her dance act at the Guimet Museum in Paris.
March 14, 1899 - German Ferdinand von Zeppelin receives a US patent for a "Navigable Balloon."
March 15, 44 BCE - Julius Caesar is stabbed to death by Brutus, Cassius, and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March in Rome.
March 16, x - American blues guitarist T-Bone Walker dies of bronchial pneumonia at 64.
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What I’m Reading
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
The Atlantic
What I’m Watching
Shogun on Hulu
Catherine the Great on Max
What I’m Listening To
Hit by a Train: The Best of the Old 97’s, The Old 97’s
Build Bridges, The Sure Fire Soul Ensemble
Journaling Prompt for the Week #11 of 2024
Write about an area of your life where you have difficulty accepting things as they are. How can you create a better reality?
Thanks for reading. Have a great week.