How can all be well when all is not well, at the same time?
And you heard the answer even as you wrote.
Well, I heard the analogy: How can we be individuals and communities at the same time?
Mostly it is a question of focus. “What You See Is What You Get” is an expression you use sometimes. Perhaps this is true in a sense not intended by those who invented it.
No, In computer terms, WYSIWYG (pronounced wissywig) means transparency: Literally, whatever you are looking at is the result. It means there won’t be translation errors, you might say. But you are using it to mean, depending on how we choose to see things, that’s how they are.
Well – not quite. Depending on how you choose to see things, that’s the aspect of them that seems to you to be real. That often seems like the only aspect that is real. In this case, closer to “Choose your own reality” than “Create your own reality.” It isn’t that you are shaping reality by how you choose to see it, but that you are shaping your reality, which after all is the only reality you can know; you can’t know the ultimate reality any more than we can. Our perception of reality is always going to be less than whatever reality really is in essence.
Life is always our personal subset of reality. We never see the entire picture, only our subset which we often take to be the entire picture. I am clear on that. Even the fact that each of us has uncounted versions living different timelines tells me that reality has to be bigger than anything anyone or any one timeline can apprehend. By definition, really.
All right. So then it shouldn’t surprise you – though we suspect that it will – to hear that the shape the world is in is no more fixed than anything else, except in any given timeline.
That makes perfect sense, and you’re right, it never occurred to me. Not sure why. Or, actually I suppose it has been obvious all along, but in a different context that I didn’t happen to associate with this one.
Most of learning is less the acquisition of new facts than the associating of what you already know in different contexts.
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This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.