A friend was telling me about a complicated land dispute he was in the middle of and I said, “Well, we all create our own realities.” He looked at me like he wasn't buying it or that he didn't want to hear that mystic crap from the likes of me, who believes in nothing. There are some exceptions but it does seem to be an immutable truth.
Who we are, where we are, what we're doing, and who we're doing it with, because of decisions we all have made over the years, predicts our states of mind and living situation today. Maybe this concept is related to cause and effect or is cause and effect.
In my friend's case thirty years ago he let someone drive through his land with the lumber to build his house (against my advice) telling him he would build a road in the other way around later. The neighbor built his house then refused to stop driving through, my friend was afraid to try to stop him as he could be violent, and for thirty years he's been subjected to all the bad feelings and regret generated from doing the guy a favor. Every time the guy, or his family and friends, drove past his house it stressed him out. (Now the couple and their kid are dead, there's no will, he's finally blocked off the road, and the heirs are circling.)
He is just a single example, of course, everyone has a backstory, a history of decisions which leads us to today: everyone is a living breathing example of this philosophy one way or another, including myself, as I have been an uptight person, an erratic boss at times, clueless in some ways and now I find myself alone with just the birds feeding on my deck for company here on a beautiful acre on the river, hmm, sounds idyllic.
Yet life is not bleak: today I awoke with a smile on my face, gave a whoop of pure joy, and danced into the living room to Latin jazz music with a big smile on my face. There is a lot to be said for not having to deal with other people in my space and I may just say it.
Another person I know has these cheap rentals he has to deal with and which may be a good investment for his old age but for some reason he's not making any money from them (which he intends to give away to good causes), or not what he planned. He's an absentee landlord who came back to get paid and his rental agent said the rent equals the expenses and there's no profit.
Even if there were does he really want to deal with tenants? (I had the opportunity to be a landlord but I knew, though it would have been a good investment, that I would fixate on every little thing, never have peace, and so declined. Yeah, I do sort of regret that decision.) He's well-off from inheritance and probably doesn't need the aggravation but he insists on creating low-cost housing, as a moral imperative, for people who appreciate it even if they're not paying the rent, although if code enforcement were aware they would red tag and want to bulldoze the whole scene, and ten more people would be out on the street.
Maybe he's not aggravated and has developed the tools to just flow with a complicated life, something I'm not capable of. Maybe it's fulfilling and worth it to him to provide affordable housing—he might be the last socialist or communist.
This is an endless story, everyone has created their own reality, and those who disagree with this diatribe probably aren't happy or satisfied with life and need to blame outside forces rather than themselves.
not all situations in reality are created by ourselves alone!” everybody creates their own reality” is a totalatarian generalization that only decribes some situations not all, i lived in Willits for allmost 2 decades and the compssion driven but very misguided bleeding heart social worker types placed 2 ex felon,drug addict females right in our neighborhood,gave them free apartments,free utilities,free food and extra ash for shopping privilages both women were mentally ill and had severe anger issues(the one placed directly across the street from me was an avid neo-nazi,) both were deeply lonely and immedietely started trouble with me and all neighbors in the vicinity,the other gal was bi-polar addicted to narcotics while dealing them out of her state funded apartment and again wandering around the hood creating endless problems for folks unlucky enough to be in proximity to her,the local cops and sheriff were burned out on her nuisence calls and her constant persecution of people living near her,Theres no way in hell our dissatisfaction with these avid troublemakers was “created by our own discontent”blaming people for all negative occurences in their lives simply means you arent paying Attention to the subtleties of Life. Its a one sided bully philosophy ,kick the victim while their down idealism like the cruelty aspect of karma which keeps the caste system of India intact and yes, its just another=New Agey mind distortion
We can observe, in the relationship between the final paragraph of the article and the very long run-on comment following, a fine example of cause and effect.