Sunday, January 20, 2002

A Little Freedom!
I took my mother down to my brother in New Paltz, where she will stay for a few days and give me a break. So, last night I took a long soak in sea salt and lavender and today I'm going over to have dinner with a friend and help her set up her computer.

She and I went to see A Beautiful Mind the other night. Both the movie and the story are exceptional. It made me wonder how many schizophrenic people there might be out there with all kinds of potential, but they are lost in this other reality. It's amazing to me how John Nash was able to find a way to separate his two realities even though he continued with an awareness of both of them. It also brought to mind something Daniela Bouneva Elza from livingcode.ca emailed me last week. She said:
There is this idea I wrote about on my weblog some time ago, that reality is consensual. If enough people believe something to be true it becomes so. So again I wonder where and who defines reality for us, because I do not see people getting together to do it for themselves?.

The whole notion of us each living in our own reality is something I've been wrestling with for some time. How does someone who does not live in the majority reality survive? I'm not just talking about schizophrenics. There are lots of people who just see things differently. They wind up unemployed/able and spend their lives wondering why they are locked out. Does that mean that they will continue not to thrive unless they buy into the majority reality? And what if they can't seem to do that, even though they are on the verge of being homeless and starving? Should they be getting therapy? Take meds? It seems that for survival, one must somehow be able to survive in the majority reality. It's very upsetting.

I remember once reading that, as an astrological Capricorn rising, I have my feet on the ground and my head in the sky. In some way, it often seems like living in two realities at the same time.