Is this the real life or is this just fantasy?

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? 

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.

Open your eyes. Look up to the skies and see.

♥

♥

♥

    What does it mean? These are the opening lyrics from the 1970's outrageous six-minute smash hit of all time, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. These lyrics are also the opening to a western-inspired ballad, a wild mock opera, rock development, and a pre-emo-seedling coda to finish it out, with all wildly nonsense lyrics.

    Or are they nonsense? While sure, they are, let's look at how words shape our reality. Pushing aside the ballad, "Mama, life had just begun, and now I've gone and thrown it all away," with all of the chaotic babble that follows, this honestly is about what it's like when one feels the hand of judgment or simply feels lost as a neophyte in a complicated world. But let's just look at the opening.

     Is this the real life? Have you ever asked yourself that? Be honest! What is "real"? Does it matter if it is all we know? There is a marvelous short animated story with music that came to me via PBS back when I was bedbound. I was riddled with so much phantom pain from nerve damage wrought from the total nerve death of my entire leg that I was out of my mind. Somehow, though I remember little of that time, I remember that film. It was called Rarg by Tony Collingwood. If you can find it now on YouTube in its entirety (about 20 minutes), it is worth the view. It regards a society that becomes accidentally self-aware that their reality is just a dream in the mind of another man, and what they set forth to do about it.

     Is this just fantasy? That's the same question, really, yet it's stated in a better way to my taste. Everything is what we believe. If we believe that we are being swept away in a current of trends with which we cannot keep up, we will not keep up and it will feel overwhelming. If we instead believe that we are going on an adventure and love the challenge, it will not feel like a rough current at all but a an invigorating breeze in our sails. 

     If we fantasize about that very future we want, if we in fact believe it with all of our heart and soul, barriers to that future will not exist. No escape from reality? Reality is what we make it. I made my reality after that little film. I declared myself well, no nerve damage, a perfect leg, and I forced myself to walk and grow back three feet of nerve structure.

     I also think Freddie Mercury knew about this firsthand. He didn't have an "in" in the music business. He was not pre-chosen or groomed, and he did not start out with the band or grow up with them. He showed up as a dorky young man when the band was already formed and he believed in himself and saw the stardom. He did not see barriers to his greatness. Doors started to open to take in his fabulous voice, precision, and songwriting skill. His ridiculously long, nonsense song somehow made it out after numerous rejections and the effect on the world snowballed. Open your eyes. Look up to the skies and see.

     So consider what your daily mood might be; what is your default. Consider what you really believe and always have believed. How do these things curiously ring true in your reality and not in the lives of others? What could you work to change, really work intentionally to make a new belief? We don't need to wait for a catastrophe or a miracle to change our lives. 

Peace and joy,

Lydia