Yesterday, I shared a quote from Ayn Rand’s book, Atlas Shrugged, that ended with this sentence:
Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. Atlas Shrugged, p. 418
I think this statement is true, and I am in the process of exploring in just how many ways I have lied to myself to avoid facing reality in my life. I used to believe this was limited to the child abuse, which was understandable – As a child, my abusers distorted reality to meet their purposes, and I had not yet developed the reason to be able to fight back other than believing deep down inside that their actions were wrong and that there had to be another way of life than being an abuser or victim.
My challenge today is awakening to the reality that I have refused to recognize reality in so many areas of my life, even in adulthood and even after working for years to heal from the child abuse. My guess is that this need to self-delude is a widespread issue that is not limited to abused children. (I think it helps explain the dynamics of many dysfunctional families.)
Society is responsible for many of these delusions (which is one of the points in Atlas Shrugged). As an example, growing up in a rural area of the South in the United States, I was told repeatedly that being a stay-at-home mom was the “only way” and that it would fulfill me as a woman. It did not. Don’t get me wrong – I love my child and value our relationship. However, being his mother is only one aspect of who I am, and the first three years of his life were very difficult because I thought there was something “wrong” with me. Being a stay-at-home mom whose sole role in life was to take care of a child and do housework was not a good fit for me, but I kept beating myself up for being a “bad person” for not finding fulfillment in this role. I kept thinking that if I tried harder, put forth more effort, etc., I would reach that place of fulfillment, but it never came.
When my son was three years old, I placed him in a preschool program and started working part-time as a writer during preschool hours over the objections of some family members who believed that being a stay-at-home mom should be my only job. This led to me being a paid to blog on the topic of adoption and then to starting this personal blog. My life is much more fulfilling by meeting my own needs as well as the needs of my family. Once I faced the reality that, despite what anyone told me, being a full-time wife and mother as my sole role was not meeting my needs, I was able to make changes in my life that led to more fulfillment. As long as I fought the reality that this arrangement was not working for me, I was frustrated and pouring effort into continuing a course of action that was not a good fit for me.
More tomorrow…
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Blooming Lotus 
Perception of reality is fluid, temporal and dynamic. The results of an scientific experiment can change only by being observed.
I find it easier to use perception. I do not accept any universal truths only my truths at the time.
One reason it is easier for me to use perception is it is easier to change than if I accept something as a reality. Even the reality of what is in the past can change if I use the term perception.
I am finding that I am much quicker at accepting things do not matter. I will use Faith’s comment “As an example, growing up in a rural area of the South in the United States, I was told repeatedly that being a stay-at-home mom was the “only way” and that it would fulfill me as a woman.”
This is not specific to the south rather it is specific to any area where the influences of an agrarian society are intact. Using this as a perception I can easily morph to those that have a stronger tie to land ownership are more likely to want to stay at home etc.
Unless I am getting paid by some agency to study this or I am making a marketing decision it really does not matter now does it? Does not matter where or why Faith got the perception. Actually after I wrote that it occurred to me that maybe it does matter to Faith. With me sometimes it matters and sometimes I only need to know that it did not come from me.
It is hard with perceptions of the future. I try as best I can to allow it will be less than I perceive or more. Any perception of the future is really a guess. I am aware that when my perception of the future does not match what happens it is always disturbing even if it is “better” As and example I busted my butt to take Aug off other than the work of therapy. Well what happened fate caused it to be earlier and I had to adjust. The plan was to get up when I wanted, eat if I was hungry, go swimming, take a nap and then if we got around to it to do something else. Even that did not work as perceived. We could have made it happen. What is best is to just get up and if we get around to it to do something else. It does happen to be swimming then a nap it is just not first thing.
I also find it sometimes helpful to understand why others perception became mine. Saying it is a choice is valid. Knowing I had other things to worry about and it was the best choice not to really evaluate at the time is important to me.
Often I am saying. I do not know, no one else does either and I am OK with that. The key for me is to know if I am really OK with what ever it is. Often an explanation is accepted only because it is a possible explanation rather than accepting it is unknown.
If I no longer share the perception that I once shared with others I no longer feel no need to blame them in the same way. It is often part of my grieving it just does not take as long.
I find Rand’s work interesting I do think there is a flaw in that the elite did not always exist so if they fell a new elite might evolve as history has shown to be true.
As for objectisim (sp) “A scientist goes to God and says we have created life from dirt and therefore there is no need for you to exist.” God said “Very good now you need to create your own dirt.”
“I do not accept any universal truths only my truths at the time.” That is good.
Faith and Michael, you have both provoked my investigative and insight responses with this post and your comment. I thank you for challenging my perceptions.
I was entertained by a friend the other day. She had me, my sister and another friend over. I was struck by how sweetly decorated her home was, how adorable she set the table, and the little “extras” she put into everything she did. It was a very nice afternoon and we all had a really good visit and conversation was deep and satisfying.
Later while contemplating over it all, I thought, she had to bless herself first to even have what she had to bless us with. She had to take care of her health, think about her home, work on her home, etc . . .
It was a whole revelation for me. I have such a difficult time breaking the molds I was forced into as a child.
My dad’s motto that we often heard, “One bull to every pasture.”
His belief were women belonged barefoot and pregnant. They were baby makers and men servers.
I loved having babies and I thrived on serving my man, but when it wasn’t good enough, and whenever I was rejected in that role, I fell apart into a millions shattered pieces.
I am just learning now, with the help of my T, how to really listen within, and to my needs and to what “fits” for me.
I don’t ever want to just be selfish in it all, but really, the first responsibility we have is to take care of our self. If we don’t, who will?
Now seriously thinking, does society even have a reality? I see delusion on every hand and heaven help the poor soul who refuses the delusion and begins to shout, “THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!”
“One bull to every pasture.”
My fathers was a man is king of his castle. Another was this fist is steel and the other iron. Not a good day when I pointed out steel was an alloy and included iron. I was 8 I was not being a jerk just information to me.
Hi Faith, You really hit on a great point. Through out my life and probably everyone on this blog, we have moved through different phases of reality. As we justify our offenders actions, our other parents lack of action, when we haven’t yet uncovered all the piece. Our reality abuse or not changes over time. What I believe this year isn’t necessarily the reality of my life in a decade. But, for the abuse person that constant normal shift of reality is damaged, we get triggered, we regress to make progress (speaking of my experience with affective therapy). The true definition of sanity is holding firmly to what is real at all cost. Maybe this is where our anger comes in. We get triggered into new or unknown realities. Constantly changing our tectonic plates. We have to move in and out of our reality depending on who we are with. It is a sad fact that their are people who could never handle our realities or how we chose to deal with them. Their are people that if we shared our true realities we would be branded for life by them. So we have our chameleon personalities that we think make us more normal, we change to be who we need to be for work, family, friends. But, one really has to wonder if this is healthy. In my experience if I didn’t them I would go around being a victim all the time, to be successful in life my reality is that I can’t carry this abuse into every relationship that I have. It would be totally inappropriate to discuss my abuse with my boss, most of my co-workers. There are people that have the misguided notion that if you were abused as a child that more than likely you are a abuser yourself. I have found at this point in my life (early early 50’s) that to own peace, you have to be willing to forgive, which in my 20’s I would have balked at the idea. I have realized that forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting, it is something that you work on for a long time, day after day. For me once I learned that forgiving is something I do for me, I started daily say God by faith I forgive this person and this person and this person. It doesn’t happen over night. For me the main person of my disgust (I’m having a hard time wording this) I was in my Kitchen and I felt the non-forgiveness leave me. I felt free. But, most importantly I felt sorry for the sibling that brought so much pain into my life. I saw him as God had intended him to be and I felt the hope that God was working to bring it about. For the first time I saw how the abuse he subjected my sister and me to, had ruined him for life, affected his life more devastatingly that my sister and me. I know it’s comparing apples and orange’s, but I read in so many of these post how their violator went on to live a happy life. When my brother was sent off to a all male catholic school he found and used every drug he could. He fried his brains literally, (he was an intelligent person prior to High School a very intelligent person – he probably would have graduated a scholar with out the drugs) I saw that I wasn’t the only one that didn’t get the help I needed, he didn’t either. It probably would have been better for him to have been a sociopath (with out a conscience), but he had to live with the guilt of what he had done. By his High School years it would have been impossible for anyone to miss that something was seriously wrong with my little sister who was hell bent on self destruction, hating herself and everyone around her. My brother has never held down a job (except in his early 50’s he worked at Wal-Mart in the backroom during Christmas rush). He has lived a life of eternal poverty. His only saving grace is the art that runs through our family. He got a double portion, very gifted and it has kept him from being a homeless bag person, by finding side jobs. So as reality goes it is a ever changing thing, I have learned that it is not consistent, that my reality does change through out life. Or if it is a matter of a Family re-union my reality may change every 5 minutes. I’m not kidding, as I run into family at various levels of dealing with our lives, I shift, my little sister will not talk to me because I have forgiven my brother for what he did to me. It’s not like I go out to dinner with him or hang out in his rotting trailer. She has turned her back on God which to me is very sad. In our lives she was a far more functional person when she had a relationship with God. People say that God is just a crutch. I tell them they are right I have things that make me stumble so a crutch is just what I need. My life is not perfect, my family will never be. My parents are gone now. So the family is rarely together. Fights over the estate etc. have caused anger and division, mostly at me as I was the executor. I feel like I have to add this with all the fights over priceless antiques and such, I had everyone write down what they reasonably wanted from the estate. The only thing my brother asked for was my Grandfathers rocks. ROCKS! That’s all he wanted from the tangible items. These rocks were passed down to my father. They were not ordinary rocks they were gems to rare mineral rocks, rubies and turquoise. Rocks! He didn’t want them to make jewelery out of them or sell them he wanted to be the curator of my grandfather’s life’s work. My Grandfather actually went out to the deserts and where ever a certain rock was likely to be found (he was kind of like a bird watcher that travels all over to see the rarest bird, but in his case he was even rarer than a bird watcher he was the rock master) So in the end all my brother felt worthy of was ROCKS! Not the dining room and buffet set that was worth over $50,000 if refurbished, what was he going to do with a table that could extend more than 20 ft. his trailer is probably twenty feet. My understandable bitter little sister wanted nothing from that house. But in the end she came out one day and took almost every antique mirror and picture from the house. No one would dare question her, she is bitter and mean and so is her life partner. They say in the nursery rhyme that words can never hurt me, they never met my little sister. She probably paid for about five years of counseling and most of it focused on her being a lesbian. Reality sums up how functional we are going to be in this life. Don’t ever fear looking reality straight in the face, change what you can, most importantly make peace no matter how long it takes you make peace with your past, so you can have a future. Hold on to reality and you will keep or regain your sanity. Love you all for listening!
I would like to add two short comments:
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
This is something that my very wise Mother told me over and over again:
People have a way of justify almost any action, and find a way to justify it!
I Love you Mom and miss you everyday!
Oh and one more and this came from my heart, it was after a young child was shot by the Washington D.C. Sniper. As a Barrack (State Police) someone had purchased a huge card to send to Children’s Hospital to the child victim: I wrote to him: Always remember that their are more good people in this world than bad, don’t let your heart grow hard or the bad people win!
Cindy
Faith can you change my name to just Cindy!
Do you want me to change “Sad in MD” to Cindy?
~ Faith
I find society disgusting as a whole. Many of their beliefs are wrong, in my opinion. And reality is based upon a person’s perceptions. Just ask any local hallucination you see. The problem is where your perceptions impinge on someone elses and you try to force them to accept YOUR reality – or they try to get you to accept theirs.
Truth is, reality is a hard construct. Don’t believe it? Hit yourself in the head with a rock. That is reality. Delusion is thinking it won’t hurt you.
Reality. It’s all in the details. And we choose which we see.