How I start to create my own reality

a borrowed title

Something that has been coming up for me lately is the power of choosing my reality. I am noticing more and more that what I choose to see DOES indeed become my reality. As in… reality is not this one objective thing, and I must learn to see all its faces. Reality is anything and everything. And one of them can be just whatever I choose it to be. I have heard about this idea before. Specifically, in Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The premise of the book can be summed up with this:

"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked."

It sounded nice and profound. But if I were being honest, it never resonated with me. It would be nice for everyone else. But me? I have too many responsibilities to have a life like that. It was like someone was offering me a miracle drink that would cure all my ailments, and my mind goes: No thanks, I already have some water.

I guess there is always that fear of— no way that’s how it works. That’s too good to be true. Deep down, we don’t believe we deserve too-good-to-be-true things. Our truth is that we must earn everything we want with sacrifice and hard work. I must at all times see things objectively as it is, or I will blindside myself into some kind of disappointment.

There is also the doubt that I myself cannot be good enough to assign meaning to my own life. Doubt + fear = self-preservation. To protect myself from my ineptness, it is safer to think less of myself and strive to be better than to think more of myself and end up an arrogant fool.

But lately, I have changed.

I moved into the mountains 3 months ago. Suddenly, I feel good about myself. Like really good. I like what I think and how I see the world. I love what I’m co-creating with the land. So I guess I started to give myself some credit. Just enough to dare trying out this “life’s meaning is in what you give it” thing.

And believe me, it wasn’t a lot of credit. Just a quarter for this arcade game I’ve always wanted to play. So I tried it with my oven. A few weeks ago, Ray and I splurged on a brand new oven from Costco. This oven is worth like 2 months of our mortgage (we have a tiny mortgage), so to us it was a huge deal. We told ourselves that to be able to make bread and any pastries we crave from scratch would be more than worth the price.

We live in the mountains. Getting an oven like that delivered was no easy feat. But we did it. But then what happened? The oven did not work! We thought it was because we didn’t install the gas correctly. We spent days trying to fix it. We called up our neighbors for help. Eventually, a repair guy came out to say: The electronic piece is faulty. Now we need to get another piece shipped from who knows where.

I’ve been sitting with this uneasy feeling about the oven. It did not seem to fit in the mountains. I remember saying to Ray: if repair guy cannot fix it, we should take it as a sign and return it.

So we took it as a sign we were meant to learn to bake with fire. On the same day, we rebuilt the fogon that was here 2 generations ago. And when that fire got going, we enjoyed the most delicious pizza of our lives. There was life in that pizza. Every breath we fed into the fire, we tasted it in the pizza. Stories from generations past came back alive, whispering a language our body remembers but our mind cannot understand. Needless to say, the oven is gone. Was that a real sign? It doesn’t matter! It was real because I wanted it to be. And it led me to where I wanted to be.

Another example is a story I love from Ray. His cousin is getting married. He had only seen his cousin in the past 10 years, once at his grandma’s funeral. And he believes his grandma passed away the way she did to bring the family together. He has also been feeling closer to her, like she is looking over him, since her passing. Anyways, going to Boston for this wedding would add a great inconvenience to our big trip to the States and Vietnam. So when his cousin texted asking if he was coming, he was ready to say no. Then a bird shit on him in his meditation.

Ray holds a very fond memory of the time his grandma got shit on by a bird when he was a kid. So he believed that was his grandma’s doing, telling him to change his mind. So now we are on our way to Boston! It’s not that inconvenient. We were able to fit in a monastery trip on the way there. I’m so excited about it. Anything could happen. Who knows? But it for sure changed the course of our lives. We will never be the people who didn’t go to the wedding ever again. All because of bird shit.

Now our trip is here, and this is the last example I’ll leave you with. The idea of being gone this long has been very difficult. We have hundreds of young plants that we just put in the ground. We’ve only been here for 3 months. We’ve only begun to learn to connect with the land. There is a lot of anxiety.

This morning before dawn, I stood there for a long time. It was hard to say goodbye. It didn’t feel like I was saying bye to a piece of land, a property, or a thing. It felt like saying bye to a person I love dearly. Like our hearts were holding hands and not letting go. So much longing. Then I whispered, please continue to take care of me, even when I’m halfway across the world, I will need your help.

When I opened my eyes, I felt a strange sensation I couldn’t explain until I got to the airport.

It’s always stressful to travel with cats, and I have 2. Especially when the airline requires that you put them in 2 separate bags and pay for them separately, and you don’t do it. So I got to the counter. I ended up with a young kid who looked to be in a really bad mood. He did not feel any need to even fake a smile or say hello. As he was checking our bags, his eyes did not leave the cat carrier. I could feel the tension arising in the air.

Meanwhile, all 3 of my checked bags were overweight due to an insane amount of bananas of insane sizes.

“They’re my first bananas from my finca. I bring them back for my family”. I said as I gave him my ID, trying to lighten the air. Didn’t work.

Then Ray asked if he would like a hand, since we brought too many. He said Sure. His eyes still did not leave the cats. Suddenly, he walked out from behind the counter and stood next to me. In a low voice, he said, “I am going to pretend like I didn’t see you have 2 cats in there. It is the policy to ask you to put them in separate carriers. But I don’t think you even have another carrier. Of course, this conversation never happened”. And he went back behind the counter.

He handed me our boarding passes, and I handed him a hand of bananas. He laughed and said, “Wow I can see why you’re overweight. This guy is at least 10 lbs!”

And in that moment, I remembered the feeling I had when I said goodbye to the mountains. The moment was the feeling. The feeling of exhale. Of knowing the mountains heard my request.

Of course, my rational mind says, “or what actually happened is that he’s a nice guy and he would’ve let anybody pass, whether you offered him bananas or not”. And that is also true.

You see, I’ve come to realize there isn’t one ultimate truth in the dimension we live in. It is all dreamt up by consciousness. One day, a man says: Man should be able to fly in the sky like birds do. And then we do.

Another day, a man says: Man should be able to go to Mars. And then we do.

So you see, you and I are totally capable of assigning meaning to our lives. Wherever the heck we want it. If we are not ready to do it more deeply because there is some underlying belief still blocking us from it, then we can start more superficially. Give meaning to the phone call we just received. To the mushroom we find in the forest. Maybe if we open our hearts to the good things without fear, good things will continue to come to us.

I have a deep desire to connect with the land. But I don’t really know how to do it. So I just keep assigning meaning wherever I find. And the more I do this, the more connected I actually feel to the land. Does it matter if I cannot use the scientific method to prove this connection? Or to replicate it for someone else to see with their own eyes? Of course not. There is no need to prove to anyone else this connection exists. This is between me and the land.

When you feel loved and safe, you do not need to explain it. You do not need to prove what the heart already knows.

Everyone is already choosing to live in their own reality. Only they’re doing it unconsciously through their unconscious beliefs and biases. So wouldn’t it be a lot better if we do it consciously? There is anger, ugliness, and violence in the world. But there are also beautiful things. If we choose to see only beautiful things, our hearts will become beautiful. It will give rise to compassion and kindness. It will give us strength to handle difficult things.

We do not need to ask if we deserve a perfect life of our wildest imagination before we start looking for meaning. We just need to remember that we have the capacity to find love, beauty, and connection in the most mundane things.

🥭