I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, throwing a ball around the basement with my brothers. The ball had rolled away, and I went to where I was sure it had rolled to (behind a piece of furniture). To my dismay, it wasn't there, but had rolled to another part of the room instead. I stared, thinking "this isn't right, it's supposed to be HERE." I had constructed the predicted ball-retrieval scenario and it simply wasn't playing out in reality as it had in my mind. It touched a nerve--I got upset, then angry. It was pretty ridiculous. But why?
As I got older I encountered other scenarios where this played out. I would go to parties and construct a scenario prior to how my grand entrance would play out--people would stop and yell out "Rob's here!", hand me a drink, and it would all go according to the rendering in my head. Until I arrived, and it didn't. Or you meet a girl for the first time expecting her to be a certain way, or the conversation to go in one direction, and it doesn't. Or I'd buy clothes from Banana Republic trying to look like the guys in the catalogs. But I didn't. Expectations often turn to disappointment when reality doesn't "live up" to our artificial mental construct of these various scenarios. I wonder if I'm the only one who has ever gone through this.
My mind can really get away from me sometimes. A strange case in point. One day Deb was supposed to be home from work at a certain time, and wasn't. I tried calling out of curiosity where she was, and she didn't answer. It got later, and she still hadn't arrived. A scenario started playing out in my head, not unlike the ball incident from when I was younger--she was obviously dead, and was most likely in a car accident on 95. She wasn't answering her phone because she was crushed between the seat or something horrible like that. It was only a matter of time before a police officer or the hospital would call and just confirm what I knew to be true already. I was beside myself, pacing, and figuring out how I would go through the rest of my life without her.
Well, it turns out she had her ringer off, she had stopped off at Staples to get a three ring binder, and she and her car were fine. It was the strangest thing....when I head the tires on the gravel in the driveway, and her get out of the car, it was like seeing a ghost, a resurrected body back from the grave. She was dead...and now is ALIVE! I was overjoyed at seeing her, dropped to my knees and hugged her hard, and it was like a new chapter in my life was taking place. She had come back to life.
Crazy right? This is what happens when your mind gets away from you. It wasn't fair to Deb, and it was sure hard on me, when it didn't have to be. When fantasy and reality meet, it is like two strangers encountering each other, aliens from other planets. But reality is what was there all along. Only one thing was really real.
I did, thankfully, eventually get to a point in my life where I realized the catalog photo-shoots, the TV dramas, the expectations in my head--it was all a construct, and would never square with 'real life.' So better to just drop these expectations. We suffer a bit when we choose to live in these 'artificial zones' of consciousness, and not see things for how they really are. I still suffer some when my mind races ahead, but the words of St. Francis de Sales reign me back in:
“Do not fear what may happen tomorrow. The same loving Father who cares for you today will care for you tomorrow and every day. Either he will shield you from suffering or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace then and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginings.”
St. Paul says to "take captive every thought, and make it obedient to Christ" (2 Cor 10:5). Dwelling on the past and worrying about the future don't do anyone good, but it can be hard sometimes not to fall into it. Good practice to pray for wisdom to discern truth from lies, for the Devil will always try to get your mind out of the present, the task at hand that God is calling us to, and obsess about things that aren't really there.
In the end, it's always to our benefit to face reality head on, even when it causes us pain. So, stay rooted in the present, with an eye to the future, and a remembrance of the past. Don't fall trap to the lies and expectations of how things "should be,"--whether people, places, or things--for in doing so you negate what actually is. When storms come up, pray, and keep focused on the task--the work of Christ--at hand in that very moment. Take captive every thought, in the name of Jesus, and submit your mind to the Spirit.
Reality will never square with the constructs we build in our mind. Better to just leave them behind.
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