Perception versus reality…

Perception versus reality…

Again and again we are forced to deal with many things repeatedly in our life’s. We have to deal with bosses we hate, friends we can’t stand and loves we will never have.

I have friends who are beyond happy where they are in their lives, with families and children with the jobs that they always wanted.

I also have friends who are never happy with anything that is going on, always not wanting more, but wanting not to have the path that they chose long ago.

You see we all have choices. We make some choice for some reasons and find out later with maturity that those were never the right choices to make. Our fathers and grandfathers warned us to choose carefully, our mothers warned us to wear clean underwear and to always listen to your father as they both “made mistakes they wish they never made and they want you to have a better life than what they made out of theirs.”

I believe that it all comes down to a case of perception and reality. Perception is what people think or feel. Reality is stone hard truths. Most people can’t handle reality for it forced them to face truths that are unenviable for anyone. Take for example of my “acquaintances”

Perception: The happy family man with a wife and a perfect child. He has the job he always wanted and he looks successful because of his the way he dresses, his BMW and his 4-bedroom house.

Reality: His marriage is nearly over, his child is a special needs child and he will have to sell the BMW and 4-bedroom house to move into a more reasonable manner because of the increasing doctor bills for his child. His work is mad for the extra time that he has spent caring for his child and thus passed him up for promotion. His wife is having an extramarital affair and he’s sleeping with his secretary.

Which looks better? Perception or Reality?

Take another “person I know”

Perception: He has a wife and three kids. He works for the family business and works 70 hours a week. He barely has enough time to spend with his wife, for he tries to give his kids as much time as they need. He’s not rich, barely paying the bills and his wife is a happy housewife.

Reality: His wife will leave him in two months to meet an ex-convict she met on a online video game, the business will be passed to him by his relatives knowing that he won’t have time to spend looking for a new flame because he’s either at the store or caring for his three kids, his wife has run up $3,000 in long distance phone bills that she has been hiding from him and she may have contracted AIDS.

Which is worse again?

Perception is what we all hope, we all dream of the perfect world, with a perfect family and a perfect job.

This Isn’t Perfect. It’s Life.

Life is far from perfect. It’s not even in the same galaxy as perfect. The ounce of perfection that we all seek rarely exists on this planet. For we are all human. We all have bad traits and make mistakes.

BUT WE LEARN!

Some of us learn from the hardest of falls. I learned the hard way about money, even though I was a know it all, when I had to call my parents up my junior year and have them bail me out of a BIG financial mistake. Close to $10,000 of OOPS. They and I never have and never will bring that oops up ever again to each other. I recognized my mistake and have never EVER made that same mistake again.

We should all learn to make NEW MISTAKES! Some people ask me why make mistakes at all? Because we are a better people when we do make mistakes. We learn and almost in a Pavlovian response make a change in our path and improve.

Now I would like to tell you about two other friends of mine. They are friends to me for a couple of years or more. They may read this someday or not.

One of them lives in the middle of the heartland. He has worked his life trying to follow his dream. His dream is very hard and yet he hasn’t given up. He calls around the region to find the perfect job for him. But while doing this, he hasn’t found Ms. Right. He has found Ms. Right Now, but not Ms. Right. Every time I call him I joke with him on how I wonder if he is ever going to find Ms. Right. He just doesn’t seem to think he will, but it doesn’t matter to him. His reality was to just move on, and not worry about which woman turned him down. He lets the world revolve, tries to follow his dream every day and then it happened. I got the call that I thought would never hear. “Hey Sean I met this woman…” and his voice told the story. I don’t need to fill you in on anything more with him. His perception was that he was a good guy, just waiting for the right women to find him. And she did.

I have another friend who on the other hand, tries so hard. He is the cornerstone of being nice and kind, shy and yet intelligent. He and I rarely talk, but I know his heart is good. He wants nothing more than to give his unconditional love to some woman, treat her like the princess she is to him. But he hasn’t found his Cinderella. He looks and tries to find the best of the best and looks so hard at the best that sometimes he misses out on the worst. He’s so caught up in the perception that he misses the reality. But he is learning, he is growing and he will soon see that the reality he NEEDS to see is something he will want to see only when he opens his eyes.

Perception is an amazing thing. There are some days people ask me, “How can you have such venom when talking about your ex? That’s not healthy”. The problem people see with me is that I am always “dissing” my ex-wife. If she really bothered me I wouldn’t give her the time of day. The reality is that I will always love my ex-wife in some small portion. My reality is once you give your heart and soul unconditionally to someone, it is truly hard to get the whole heart back.

The perception I need and the reality I want differ major. I perceive my needs to be of meeting anyone and spending anytime with anyone. The reality is that I need to find that special woman who realizes that without a shadow of a doubt that I am a special man that fulfills that need within her.

So I continue the search, I look for her. But I still have a feeling and maybe I’m wrong, I’ve been wrong before… that she’ll find me when I’m not expecting it.