The other day, I was sitting on my recliner, watching TV. Actually, it was a movie. Mr and Mrs Smith. I was not well. I’d had the day of sneezing, I’d had the day of sniffing, and I was on the day of completely clagged sinuses. The next day would be coughing, and the day after would be recovery … that’s just how the flu works with me.<\/p>\n
My TV doesn’t have an anti-reflective screen, and, because it was during the day, every now and then, the sun would shine brightly into the kitchen behind me. A view of reality would overcome the view of fantasy in which I was indulging; an image of the kitchen would wash out the movie.<\/p>\n
And you know, I resented that view of reality. Despite the fact that I could get up and touch the thing that was being reflected (and I could never touch the fantasy); that I could draw real physical nourishment from within what was being reflected (and the fantasy diminished me); that if I stuck with the fantasy\u00a0and ignored the reality\u00a0for long enough, I could die … I resented the reality.<\/p>\n
But why? Why does the fantasy hold so much attraction for me? I think John Eldredge nails it when he talks about our lives from a mythic standpoint. The mythic reality he presents is that things are not what they seem; that I am born into a world at war; that I have a vital role to play.\u00a0I yearn for the myth … to live in the myth. I need to learn how.<\/p>\n
Know what? I discovered that all it took to switch between seeing the reality and seeing the fantasy was for me to change how my eyes focused. Even without the bright sunlight, the reality was perfectly visible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The mythical reality … is that things are not what they seem; that I am born into a world at war; that I have a vital role to play. I yearn for the myth … to live in the myth. I need to learn how.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cairns-family.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}