“All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

How much of life simply happens to us, and how much of life is of our own making?  What is the jumble of physical, emotional, and mental imagery that rolls around our brains and translates into our view of reality?  We look at a building, a tree, or a flower and say, “it is what it is;” but isn’t it true that we pass the images through the filters in our own minds in order to create what we see as the true essence of each of these things?  I only say this because I know that my own view — my own definition — of a building, a tree, and a flower has changed dramatically through the years of my life.

When I was a child, a building was simply a box with doors and windows — only on the side I was viewing at the time, of course.  A tree was a sort of stick with a lollipop of leaves plopped on top.  A flower was its petals, and mostly its aroma.  As my experience and my understanding grew, buildings had girders and wallboard and carpets.  They had wires and pipes that carried electricity and water.  They had doors and windows in the back as well, even if I couldn’t see them from my vantage point.  Trees had branches, an intricate network of arms that stretched from a thick base near the trunk to delicate twigs at the points where the leaves sprouted; and the leaves were individual parts of a greater whole whose shape changed with the winds.  Flowers had stems and leaves and stamens and pistils.  They held pollen that assured the growth of more flowers; and when I saw a dust-covered bee, I knew he had visited a flower and collected its pollen.  Without seeing the flower, I still recognized its essence in another place.  My experience has taught me what to expect of the things I have experienced.  I suppose you could say that my own thoughts about a building, a tree, and a flower are really what gives them meaning in my world.

If I look back to the early days of my life and the limited experience that created my first definitions of reality, I can see that the world I carry with me has changed a great deal.  I no longer rely on the assumptions I made as a child who saw things for the first time.  Now I must begin to wonder.  Suppose there are other perspectives I have not yet learned about reality?  Suppose the building I see across the street really has no doors and windows at all, but I expect to see them and therefore they exist?  Suppose each leaf has its own awareness and moves in its own way when touched by the wind?  Suppose the flower calls out in a voice audible only to the bee, so that its pollen might be carried to another plant?

We must be careful to remember how we limit or embellish reality based on the thoughts we mix with the images around us.  There may be a whole lot of life that we still have to discover.  When we mix our own dreams with a love of life, we create a reality that calls us to dream some more.  Indeed, we do shape our lives by mixing all the parts of the world with all the parts of ourselves.  Have a beautiful life today.