Road Reality Check

This could be titled dreams vs reality.

What is the yardstick of your life? What do you measure it by?

I used to think I had a good grasp on this. The answer was basically “doing things I believe in”

This meant drumming, playing in bands, helping others, making art, starting some business of my own. All things I’ve done too many times to count. Then reality hits.

The phrase “You’ve got to face reality” is a common one. But what does that really mean? What IS reality?

I think it depends on who you ask.

Talking to a friend the other day we agreed that there is never any good news in the papers or on the news. So from this reality it would seem the world is totally in chaos and everything is falling apart and that there are these two parties who are claiming to have leaders who know what should be done to fix things. On and on it goes with this thing called reality.

My current reality is composed of a hotel room, actually I’m writing this in the empty continental breakfast room in the hotel.

We played a great show in New York City last night, but that reality is gone. So it seems reality has nothing really to do with the past. I guess you could say “I had a reality last night that was pretty good….” but seems to indicate that the past is a reality. But it’s gone, so that can’t really be much of a reality.

I’m in this hotel, alone and my girl is mad at me because I’m away and it’s not looking like we’re going to make any real money on this tour. That is part of my current reality  because I’m connected to someone I love and my attention is on her. But I’m still in a hotel lobby getting ready to pack up and head to Boston for tonights show.

I think that reality is basically the future. The future however doesn’t really exist yet. The gig tonight may be amazing and sell out and we could make more money than we thought and things will work out. But all that potential exists in the future.

We are always able to change the future. We can’t really change the past although we can learn from the past. But the past happened the way it did because of decisions we made at the time about the future. We look at the present and decide into the future something we hope will be an improved state. And sometimes we mis estimate.

Life seems to be a contest between the past, present and future. But only the future really matters because that reality is wide open.

Never let anyone tell you your dreams are unreal or impractical. They’re all you really have. And they can always be put into the future. Put them there and push your current “reality” (the one that will be gone in a second) towards your dreams.

Make sure to include the ones you love in your dreams. Or find the one who is your dream and make a dream together.

Author: Ian

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