Between What’s Real and How It Feels

Being perfectly candid, I can say, though I have a fit-looking body, I would love to lose 20 pounds—get it off and keep it off. I do love food. It’s a perplexing dichotomy to me that I can be both happy enough looking in the mirror to justify undisciplined eating habits, yet unhappy enough also to want to lose those 20 pounds.

Between what is real and how I feel isn’t much but it’s enough to keep me from my goals, until, that is, I decide once and for all what I want. I believe we all have situations where we battle with what’s real and how we feel about it—being that there is often a gap we find incredibly hard to bridge.

It might be that we’re single and yet yearn to be in a relationship. It might be that we have a health problem and just wish to be healthier than we can be. We may be at a loss to change something about us, and the reality we detest, yet there just doesn’t seem any way to make the change or accept the way we are or the cards we’ve been dealt.

Life Is A Paradox

This is no answer, but it does point out an important fact that can help. If we accept our realities, that acceptance can influence how we feel. On the other hand, if we decide we cannot accept our realities, and we do wish to drive ourselves to change, our feelings can influence our realities. With motivation we can achieve change slowly over time.

But life is a paradox, in that our realities, however good they are, are never really satisfactory; not to us. Sure, to others what we have and many of the problems we have are interpreted differently. But it’s our lives. We’re the ones needing to live in our skin, thinking and feeling as only we can.

Between what’s real and how we feel is a gap, and an opportunity, to be worked on. Both acceptance and the challenge to change can reduce this gap. We could even do both. Anything to reduce the level of felt insanity that we deal with on a daily basis—the self-talk that runs rampant between both places—our realities and how we feel about them.

Committing To Reducing The Gap

Reducing the gap between what’s real and how we feel is an important step in our process for contentment. Being aware of this gap can send us out of our minds, unless we choose to do something about it.

Committing to change and to create new more satisfying realities is acting on the feelings we’re not happy with. We either change or accept; making the decision is the most important thing. But then the decision must be worked out. It’s a process taking time; our entire lives in many cases.

Bridging the gap between what is real and how we feel is the spiritual conquest of our lives. Beyond our commitment and our process is the grace of God to get us there—to acceptance or change or a combination of both.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.