Yes it does! Yet we humans have had a fascination with anything BUT "real life" for about for-ever! Even when I was a kid myself back in the old days...I couldn't WAIT every morning to be able to watch cartoons before going to school. Back then, early morning cartoons during the week and on Saturdays was pretty much all we kids had to take us away from real life---if only for 15 or 20 minutes. Then, as I got older, Saturdays represented "babysit the kids with the t.v." day as the morning cartoons included "other" kid-focused television shows like Captain Kangaroo, Bozo the Clown, The Ghoul, Sir Graves Ghastly, etc. On those days, we could sit in front of the t.v. staring at it for at least six hours or more. The OG personal electronics device of the early 60's era no kidding!
Even walking home from school during my childhood, my friends and I would talk about pretty much anything BUT real life. My third grade year was so caught up in the "Monster Mary" game I created for play at recess, I was WAY ahead of the curve when it came to module creation and functioning as my school's first official DM! Strahd my behind okay?! (You won't get the reference here unless you are a current or former player of D&D)!
Needless to say, as children...we can spend a lot of time fantasizing....role playing...getting caught up in any and all vain imaginings we can conjure up---and to what end? To avoid reality, that's what end! And we only get better and better at it as time goes rushing past--and we keep choosing fantasy over reality.
What we didn't know then was that learning to gaze at fantasy while only intermittently glancing at reality could become a seriously bad habit with the power to alter the course of our lives in ways more bad than good over time!
Real life matters. It always has. Just today I read that the author of the book Julie & Julia (which was made into a movie in 2009 featuring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep) passed away from a heart attack at age 49. I did watch the movie when it came out, but I never read the book. As part of her obit, it turns out the author wrote a second book "Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession". I remember reading that one after it came out until I couldn't stomach the content anymore. I didn't link that second book to "her" until it was mentioned in her online obit. IMHO, the author should have stopped while she was ahead (given the success of her first book). As I read the reviews of her second book after her death...all I could think of was how easy it is to ignore AND avoid reality when someone prefers focusing on its alternative. Now that she's gone at such an early age, I can only hope she is remembered more for her first book---rather than her second!
...and I can't help but wonder if she really would have gone ahead to write that dumpster fire of a second book had she known she would be dead before Halloween 2022!
Real life cannot truly be avoided. Even though people try very hard to avoid their own at times or all the time...or those of others they love and care about...reality cannot be swept away like dirt on one's kitchen floor.
Some more examples: the applicant who shows up for a job interview as a receptionist at a busy urgent care facility...but who also sports 5" long talons (fake nails) and tells her interviewer, "Oh, I can work the computer just fine with these; they don't bother me!"
...the elderly man (or woman) who is seriously struggling to walk with every step, but who refuses to use a cane, or a walker, or a motorized scooter to move about....
...the young girl who consumes barely 600 calories a day, drinks no more than 16 oz. of water, and wonders why she feels "bad" most of the time...
...the teenager who knows "something" may be wrong with him/her/them...but parents keep saying "You're fine! Whatever it is you'll grow out of it!"
Real Life Matters!
If you need help with this issue, please get it! Call or text me for book referrals, online or in-person support group referrals, and/or to make an appointment to see me!
The more we drift away from "what is"...we may find that it becomes too overwhelming and too difficult to come back. Don't let that happen to you!
Until next post....