Girl Problems

So remember my last post when I talked about mom having a crush on a guy at her board and care home? A much younger guy?

Well, now there’s intrigue. When I visited Thursday, she told me that “that young one” (another lady at the home, Laurene, who is in her 70s — so a young floozy in my mom’s eyes) and her guy, Ron, are flirting with each other.

Mom made a little face where she pursed her lips and waggled her head disapprovingly. She thinks Ron and Laurene are fooling around with other. Both are married. The facts are that Laurene’s devoted husband visits almost daily. Ron is just charming to every person he speaks to.

It’s an unvarnished look at how we make up stories in our heads. This isn’t real. Mom’s age, cognitive and memory issues make it glaringly obvious.

But how much of my life is exactly like this? Most of it, probably. The filters in my brain create the world I see – whether people are kind or mean or helpful or stupid.

I think this is the reality behind what trite books like “The Secret” are trying to get at when they say “You create your reality.”

It’s not that thinking about a red bicycle will make a red bicycle appear on your porch, and that thinking about cancer will give you cancer.

It’s that you can look at every situation and every person in a multitude of ways, and those perceptions are up to you. You may wake up and say “This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife,” like the Talking Heads song says. Or you may wake up and say “This life is so amazing and beautiful and I love my home and my wife.”

I often look at the world, especially when it seems ugly, and think “Wow, all of this is a product of choices.”

Now I’m thinking that even my choice to see it as ugly is the more important choice. What’s out there? It depends on what is inside.