Illusions

Today I was reminded of my past life in so many ways. Especially the years I spent on the job, as it were. I rember a Christmas party for the employees at Standard Brands Paint where I was the VP of Sales and host for the party. It was to put them at ease over the difficulties that stood before them and the company. I knew it was all over for me and I was going to receive a year's severance package as the new corporation from Venezuela took over control. They didn't like me and I certainly did not like them.The other thing I knew was that there was little or no hope for them to be successful. Ten months later, I lost two months of my severance package and all of the value of my stock holdings in the company as the company went into bankruptcy, the employees and stockholders lost all the value of their stock, no compensation, no severance pay, and they were instantly out of a job . . . perhaps a reality following the illusion of having a "Merry Christmas."

I took time out of my new life doing Trade Shows to write a few letters of recommendation for some of my former employees.

I'm a cynic, in a Tux, the look on my face tells it all, I'm actually ill in this picture, and when it comes to telling the unwanted truth in discovering the meaning of love, hate, work, or all categories of living a life we identify ourselves within this realm we call reality, I fell short that night, as I still fall short, today. 

I'm a believer that in a novel, fictionalized movie, or a song, an attempt at describing reality exists, even if it, by definition, falls short, I smile. In non-fiction, biographies, especially autobiographies, political speeches, or Christmas parties the attempt is simply to recreate a reality that doesn't exist, by design, as I grimace.

Both fiction and non-fiction have their place in the world of illusion.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.” Albert Einstein

"Our thoughts, feelings, and emotions are merely illusions, albeit delusional ones." Ronald Dawson

Our five senses make us feel as if the emotions we feel and express are acutely real, that they have substance and are real.

Thoughts arise in our mind, and we achieve awareness of our-self and others. The same thoughts tend to repeat time and again. Our thoughts make us behave, talk and act in a certain personalized way, and thus cause the people that come in contact with our "Self", to treat us and relate to us in a certain manner. Love, hate, and indifference are predicated upon this.

Our use of language becomes strangled in nonsense. We wish others a "Merry Christmas" as we know tragedy will follow whatever our hopes. Our visions of love, hate, the Universe, the identification of difference, or political economy fall short of what (?) . . . a reality that doesn't exist?


I often wonder if anyone's interior life (subconscious) is reflected in their exterior one (superego); or claims of any sort of emotional truths whatsoever are simply obsessions hiding our self-centered-indulgence (ego).

What we experience, our feelings and emotions, and how we live are reflections of our thoughts "about things" not as they really are, if you claim reality. The mind creates a world of illusion that feeds our five senses which in return feed our mind in an incessant loop. We see, taste, feel, hear, and smell an elixir-like solution of blissful emotion only to discover later it's a cover-up for medicinal purposes.

Any change in circumstance is coexistent with changes of thought; once we love passionately then indifference sets in; we hate with ardor then change our opinion on a whim or perhaps a pay off; an idealistic youth becomes a conservative pragmatic adult, soon to turn into an uncooperative curmudgeon. Now I resent and deny any attempt at a reader of mine calling me, in reality, "an ill-tempered (somewhat old) person full of stubborn ideas or opinions."

New illusions, accompanied by what we think and how we feel about things, replace old illusions. We create a world and the emotions attached to it which, when examined objectively, is only a delusional phase that we are going through that looks and feels real to the naive.

Life's process is like watching a movie. A person who is watching a movie often gets so involved with the characters and with what is portrayed on the screen that he or she becomes happy or sad, falls in love or hates, may laugh or perhaps becomes depressed at the illusion on the screen. At the moment the person decides to stop watching and manages to withdraw his attention from the movie, say when a young boy gets slaughtered in the movie's restroom, there is a revelation that takes place and the person may snap out of the delusion the movie creates, or living a life of naivety creates, as well.

Fortunately, for most people, all of one's thoughts and emotions are scheduled by the propaganda of illusion and any unscheduled reality stops on the way are brief and soon suppressed into a screaming subconscious. I'm not as fortunate and must live with the continual knowledge that my thoughts, feelings, and emotions are in reality illusions and I take this medicine daily, my just deserts, what I deserve so to speak, a bitter elixir.