Some few days ago, I was sitting in my recliner and staring out the nook window at the sky. It was full of sunsetting colors. Blues and greys, and greens and yellows, and pinks of all kinds. It was very pretty.
But I was overcome with an odd feeling. I wondered if it were all real. It looked like a painting or a picture just the other side of the window.
I told myself that I’ve been out in the world and it’s a real place. But even so, a part of me wondered and I asked myself, “What if it’s not real?”
Has the world always only been real because we think it is real?
What if none of this is real? Would it really matter?
I’ve written elsewhere that the answer to the question “What is real?” is that everything is real … as long as we think it is so. Still, the feeling I had was a strong one and seemed to be telling me otherwise. That it didn’t matter how real I thought it was. It felt like it was not.
Luckily the feeling didn’t last long and I was able to just enjoy a particularly colorful and splendid sunset.
And anyway, if this is all in my mind then I’m a pretty darn creative person. So I guess real or not, it’s okay.
Maddie's Mom Writes 
Like other souls who achieved a Zen state of being, you were in the moment.
Also, like Zhuangzi, you wondered what was real.
“Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.”
Keeping enjoying the moments you experience in the here and now, Jeff
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Hi Jeff! Thanks so much for reading! And I really appreciate the comment. That really is sort of how it felt. I hope that you also keep enjoying the moments you experience in the here and now … and that they are many.
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