Why Do We Go 'Back To Reality'? | 10/21/21

On this day 2 years ago, I started my journey as a 2ULaundry employee. I can't quite believe it's already been (and yet somehow only) 2 years with these awesome coworkers, doing some cool shit! It was definitely a risk at the time, with a lot of unknowns, but honestly the biggest risk in my eyes would have been not taking that risk. The amount of information I learned in the first few weeks surpassed what I had learned in 15+ months at Capgemini. And that rate has only increased over time. Some people advised against making that decision, some people encouraged it, and others were indifferent. I heard them all but in the end I listened only to myself. That's one of those moments when you know you're making the right decision regardless of how things turn out. Turned out great so far and it's only the beginning.

One thing that someone said at the end of the trip from Asheville was "Well, back to reality now." I thought about that for a bit. Why is going to work "reality"? Why isn't spending time in nature, with friends, connecting with yourself not 'reality'? Our definition of reality is backwards. It's like Opposite Day, except we live most of our lives like that. Living in this arbitrary reality and escaping on vacations to only come back to this same 'reality.' The allocation of time and energy in this regard it truly opposite. We 'escape reality' to retreat to places of inner and outer peace. Shouldn't we always be in a place of inner and outer peace, whether we're in our reality or someone's else's reality?

Tangential to this is the concept of the "real world." We're fed this bullshit growing up that it's going to be like this and like that "in the real world." Truth is, everything we naturally experience as children before "the real world" is actually the only real thing. We play freely, communicate expressively, think boundlessly, and do creatively. But all that gets transformed into a factory to be "successful in the real world." The sad thing is, the age at which 'the real world' is impacting people is getting lower and lower. Kids starting to think about college admissions in middle school. Taking unmanageable amounts of AP classes, resume-boosting extracurriculars. All in the hopes of being 'successful' as defined by people who didn't understand what reality really is. I'm going to stop using reality. It's a farce. I'm going to start using actuality to imply the way things actually are. Reality is one of the most convoluted and loaded words out there. Not gonna use it until it's unlearned and relearned accurately, with some basis in actuality. :)