Reality, and Other Strange Notions

"What is Real?" asks the velveteen rabbit in one of my favorite stories. Not a bad question, coming from someone with stuffing for brains. What, indeed, is real?

Carl Rogers said,

"The only reality I can possibly know is the world as I perceive and experience it at this moment."

Which implies that if tomorrow I experience something different, then reality has changed. If reality is truly real, then shouldn't it remain the same? If today's reality is not the same as tomorrow's reality, which of them is really the REAL reality?

For that matter, even today's reality could quite possibly exist in billions of varieties, one for every individual. I generally have a pretty good idea of what is real for me, but how can I possibly know if it's the same for you? I can't even say for sure that the color I experience as green looks the same as your green, or that the flavor I associate with peanut butter isn't what you taste when you eat honey-baked ham. My grass might be the same color as your sky. Perhaps in your world, daffodils are the colors I think of as pink and purple, instead of the ones I see as yellow and white. How would we know any differently, when all we are able to experience is our own version of reality?

R.D. Laing's take on the situation was kind of depressing:

"I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men. All men are invisible to one another. Experience is man's invisibility to man."

Then again, this was the same guy who said

"I am not who I think I am. I am not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am."

How confusing is THAT? In my reality, thankfully, I'm just who I am, which is a good thing. If I lived in Laing's world my head might explode. But I digress....

People are always saying, "In the REAL world..." What real world? IS there a real world? And if so, whereis it? According to Carl Rogers,

"Every individual exists in a continually changing world of experience of which he is the center."

That's gotta make "real" pretty hard to pin down!

R.D. Laing speculated that perhaps if we could somehow experience the realities of people who behave irrationally, we'd actually find their actions to be perfectly rational, viewed against the backdrop of their experience of reality.

Jean Piaget theorized that we each construct our own version of reality, constantly adapting and expanding and adjusting it to accomodate or assimilate new experiences as we move through our lives. That brings to mind my parents' house. Over the years, rooms have been added and others have been remodeled; furnishings have changed, fixtures and appliances have been replaced, and walls have been repainted. But despite the many changes, there's still plenty left of the old familiar home I left so many years ago. It's just been expanded and rearranged and improved upon, a house built for middle-aged parents with four teenagers that has evolved and adapted so that now it serves the needs of a pair of grandparents with four adult children plus sons and daughters-in-law and a dozen or so grandchildren.

The house metaphor works well for me. When I visit my friends' houses, I often come away with new ideas I can incorporate into my own home. A new gadget, a different arrangement of furniture, a daring color combination, perhaps an entirely new use for an old room. There's a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that comes from rearranging the furniture a bit, updating and redecorating, or adding an extra living space.

When I shop at Home Depot I love to wander the aisles, looking at all of the parts and pieces and asking myself "hmmm, what ELSE could you use that for?" In the same way, when I explore new concepts and ideas, I turn them this way and that, examining them to see where they might fit into my version of reality. Maybe if painted a different color, or arranged in a slightly different way, they'd actually fit right in. Or perhaps I'll run across an idea that just totally works better than one I've been using, in which case I'll toss the old one out and replace it. And every once in a while, I come across something completely new that I simply must have. Then it's time to add on a room to my reality structure.

Over time, my reality grows and changes and evolves to fit me, as I grow and change within it - just like my family's home has adapted to fit our growing and changing family. When all is said and done, though, it still feels and smells like home.

Further Explorations

I like it when pieces of a puzzle begin to fall into place. My ponderings of late (see
Have You Hugged Your Rabbit Today? and
Let There Be Light) have prompted me to go exploring, and in doing so I keep stumbling over things that make me go "Aha!" I love the sense of finding new pieces of the puzzle, new discoveries that help to (in my mind, at least) unify all of the separate realities I live in.

Today I got to start a course in Quantum Touch. That's "quantum" as in "subatomic" and "touch" as in - well, hugging rabbits.

The explanation for why this works so well was comfortingly scientific. I'll attempt to reproduce it for you, in case you were looking for something new to ponder about.

There is a vibrational energy that runs throughout everything that exists. Subatomic particles vibrate, atoms vibrate, sound waves vibrate, you and I vibrate, galaxies vibrate. The whole universe vibrates. We've lived in this buzzing, humming energy field all our lives, so we tend not to notice it much; but the world is alive with energy.

When two things vibrate at the same frequency, they resonate. If you play a note on a piano, and a guitar is nearby (assuming that, unlike mine, the two are actually in tune), the string on the guitar that corresponds to the note you played will begin to vibrate. Resonance. The vibrations of the two systems reach out to each other and join together. Energy is transferred and combined and the result is a strengthening of the vibration. This is a real thing. Soldiers learned long ago not to march in cadence across bridges, because if the bridge begins to resonate to the vibration of their footsteps, things tend to get a bit messy.

Two systems vibrating at slightly different frequencies will tend to adjust so that they are both at the same frequency - one goes up, or the other goes down, or they meet somewhere in the middle. Once at the same frequency, they can combine their vibrational energies into a stronger resonant system.

Along the same lines, there is a phenomenon known to science called "entrainment" wherein oscillating things in proximity to one another tend to adjust themselves to oscillate in phase with each other. A room full of clocks with pendulums all swinging out of phase will gradually begin to align themselves, until soon all of the pendulums are swinging in unison. Women who live in a college dorm or a house with other women discover that their menstrual cycles will entrain. Heart muscle cells, even if they are from different hearts, if placed in the same laboratory dish will begin to beat in unison. Fireflies in the same swarm will flash their lights in unison.

Our life force is part of the vibrational energy of the universe. Our bodies are amazing; we are indeed "fearfully and wonderfully made." Every cell of us contains the entire pattern of us. Each cell knows how to replicate itself, how to do the jobs it is assigned in keeping us alive and functioning and healthy. Our hearts beat, our lungs take in oxygen, our stomachs digest food, our blood circulates, transporting each substance to where it needs to go. All of this happens without us even having to think about it. When we are bruised or cut or a foreign organism invades, self-healing and protective mechanisms automatically go into action to fix the problem. Our immune systems are even able to remember how specific infections were overcome, so they can be fought off more quickly the next time they appear.

Illness, disease, injury -- these cause a disturbance in our patterns. The resonating vibrational energies within us get disrupted, things get out of phase. Which brings us to an intriguing explanation of why touch is so utterly important to us, so important that babies who are not touched simply waste away and die.

When we are touched, we are brought into contact with another person's vibration. Our bodies respond at a subatomic level, adjusting our vibrational frequency to match that of the person touching us. Resonance. Energy is transferred, and joined together, and the resonant system vibrates with greater strength than the two individual systems alone.

I like the idea, incidentally, that this vibrational energy, this life force within us, is love.

So suppose we were to begin to pay attention to the vibrational energy that is all around us and in us. Just because we've become so accustomed to it that we've tuned it out doesn't mean that we can't tune it back in. I have chronic tinnitus in my right ear. It's been there for so long that I rarely notice it any more, unless I am in a really quiet place. Most of the time I have to consciously stop and think about it, to actually focus my attention on that ear and listen, to see if it's still there.

Suppose we could stop and listen for a while, and learn to feel the energy in us and around us, and to focus it with intent on someone else's body, so that their cells could take advantage of the resulting resonance, drawing the energy they need to bring their own vibrations back into phase and thus heal a problem they were unable to overcome alone. It just makes so much sense. We need each other. We need to be touched. It's not just psychological. It's a real, basic, physical need that reaches all the way down to the atoms we are made of.

No wonder a mother's loving touch on a fevered forehead feels so soothing, the hug of a loved one so comforting. We actually draw healing strength from them. It's not just our imagination that it feels better -- it really DOES feel better.

A woman with a chronic illness once reached out to touch the hem of Jesus' garment, knowing that if she could just have that much contact with him she could be healed. Jesus, surrounded on all sides by the press of bodies in the crowd around him, stopped, turned, and asked "Who touched me?" His disciples were mystified. People were jostling him from every direction, and he wanted to know who had touched him? But he knew. He told them he had felt healing energy flow out from him.

I felt it today. I felt it flow out of me, and I felt it flow into me from others. I even found to my surprise that just lightly touching another person's back, I could feel the places where their pain was. I once was blind, but now I see -- that's how it feels. What an amazing world we live in!

Waking Walter

It's 7:45am. In the assisted living facility where I work as an aide, that's late morning. I've been on the job for over an hour, and most of the residents are already down in the dining hall eating breakfast. I always save Walter for last.

I pick up the newspaper at my feet and knock on his door. It's the rule, even though most of the residents can't hear it anyway, at least not before they get up and put their "ears" in. I know my residents, and know which doors I should knock on before entering, and for which it's pointless. Some of the residents have told me not to bother knocking - "just come on in." But if a state inspector was lurking they'd ding me for not respecting privacy. So I try to stay in the habit of knocking, and waiting long enough for a response before walking in, although not long enough to make anyone feel they have to try to get up and come open the door for me. It's a balancing act.

I pause for a moment, then open the door, calling out as I do, "Good morning! You awake, Walter?" There's no answer. I didn't expect one. I switch on the light and walk across the living room. Putting the newspaper beside his chair, I open the blinds and turn toward the darkened bedroom. I can see Walter's slight figure burrowed under his blankets. "Walter!" I feign surprise. "Are you still asleep?" I switch on the wall-mounted fixture, so it won't shine directly into his eyes. Walter groans and burrows deeper, turning away from me. "You're a sleepy head today!" I tell him. Walter groans again, and mutters, "Yeah... I'm a sleepy head." He sighs. "Ohhh, it feels good." "I know," I tell him. "But it's time to get up now." Eyes still closed, more than a hint of annoyance creeping into his sleepy voice, Walter complains, "I'm an old man, remember?" Then he tells me, "I'm out of everything." Thinking he needs supplies in his room restocked, I ask him what he's out of. "They've retired me from everything," he replies. "I am totally retired - I've got NO responsibilities." "Yep!" I tell him. "Except for getting up in the morning, huh?" He sighs. "Apparently." If his eyes were open, I'm sure he'd be rolling them at me. I laugh.

"Oh, golly," he murmurs, groaning again. "I love to sleep." "Well, once you get up, then you'll have all day to look forward to going back to bed again," I tell him, trying to keep him talking so he won't go back to sleep on me. "Huh?" He sounds sleepily surprised. "Oh, come on now." Suddenly he laughs, and I laugh with him. "You don't like my logic?" He groans in response, muttering "Oh, my gosh..." as he tries to pretend I'm not there and go back to sleep. I pat his shoulder through the covers as I walk around the bed to the closet. Selecting a shirt and some matching slacks, I grab a pair of disposable briefs from the open package on his shelf and pull his belt from the hook where the night aide hung it. Depositing them on the bed, I go to the dresser and find a t-shirt, then dig through the socks for a pair that look comfortable. I hate uncomfortable socks.

Walter is still burrowed into his blankets, ignoring the light and my chatter. "Here, stick your feet out here," I tell him. "I'll put your socks on while you're waking up." He ignores me. "Walter? Can I have a foot?" His eyelids twitch. "C'mon Walter. I have a sock, I need a foot!" He stirs a bit, and groans. "Ehhh?" "I said I need a foot to put in this sock." He still hasn't opened his eyes. "Oh, come on, now." He's annoyed again, but I pretend not to notice, and tease back, "Yeah, come on!"

Finally he opens one eye and looks sleepily over his shoulder at me. "Then you'd just want me to put the other sock on, and then..." his voice trails off as the eye closes again, his head sinking back onto the pillow. "Well, of course," I tell the back of his head. "I can't stop at just one sock, can I?" With an exaggerated sigh, he asks rhetorically, "I wonder what you'd do if you didn't have me to harass to get up." I grin. "Well, I have to get up really early to come to work, so maybe it makes me feel better to come in here and make you get up too." "Yeah, but why?" he asks, plaintively. "Why pick on me?" "'Cause I've got nothing better to do," I tell him, pulling the blankets up at the side of his bed so I can get to his feet without uncovering him all the way. "There must be something better to do," he mutters into his pillow. "There must be." He groans again. "Maybe you can help me think of something," I tell him, trying unsuccessfully to capture a foot. Walter curls up tightly, crossing his ankles and pulling his knees up toward his chest. "Hey, I'm getting cold!" "That's why I've gotta put your socks on," I tell him. "I don't want my socks on," he tells the pillow. "You've gotta have socks on," I reply. "Why?" He raises his head again and looks at me defiantly. "Well, you can't run around barefoot." "Why?" he repeats. I laugh. "Because then you'd be cold! Here, let me have this foot." "Oh, come on," Walter grumbles. He sighs and turns over, finally sticking his feet out for me. "Oh, golly. When a gal gets something in her head, you just can't win, I guess." "That's right," I agree. "We're just contrary creatures." "Oh, my goodness," he sighs, and groans again.

Finishing with his socks, I look up at him. "Do you need to go to the bathroom?" "No," he says, tugging at the collar of his pajama shirt. "I've gotta scratch." "Where, back here?" I give his back a good scratching, and he moans appreciatively. "Oh, yeah... but... oh, dear…" He pauses for a moment, then looks at me, puzzled. "What am I supposed to be doing?" "Getting dressed," I tell him. "Why?" he wants to know. "'Cause you can't go to breakfast in your pajamas." "Why not?" "Well," I tell him, "it's just a rule they have here. If you did it, then everybody else would think they could go to breakfast in their pajamas too." "You mean they couldn't?" He sounds surprised.

Unbuttoning his pajama shirt, I help him take it off and put on the clean undershirt. He's silent for a moment. Then as I pull his shirt over his head, he asks me, "Does it stand to reason that the harder you pull the trigger, the harder the gun will shoot?" "I guess so," I tell him. "But what does that have to do with pajamas?" "Well, they say for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, and all that sort of stuff," he explains. "Yeah, that's true." I zip the front of his shirt. "But what does it have to do with pajamas?" He looks at me knowingly. "The shadow knows." We both laugh.

"Okay Walter, now you have to stand up." "Huh?" "I need you to stand up," I tell him. "Why do I have to stand up?" "So we can put your pants on." "But I've got pants on," he protests. "Those are pajamas," I point out. He studies them. "Is it 'puh-JAM-mas,'" he asks, "or 'puh-JAHM-mas'?" "Hmmm. I don't know, what do you think?" He ponders this for a moment, then with a twinkle in his eye he informs me, "I prefer 'nightgown.'" We laugh together. I'm still standing, waiting to help him up. He looks up at me, and says resignedly, "Oh, me. I guess I've got to get up. A woman gets her mind set on something..." "There's just no way around it," I commiserate. "Nope," he shakes his head sadly. "Nope," I agree. "Do you need a hand?" "Huh?" "Do you need a hand?" I ask again. He frowns. "What for?" "For standing up," I tell him. "I've already got two hands," he says, holding them out for me to see. I laugh, and he looks smug for a moment. Then he shakes his head sadly, and groans. "I say, sleep for me is such a treat..." "And we want to keep it that way," I say. "Huh? Why?" "If we let you sleep all the time," I tell him, "you'd get tired of it, and then you wouldn't have it to enjoy." He raises an eyebrow at me. "You wanna bet?" I laugh again. "I bet. Come on, you can do it," I prod. "Stand up." "I guess I can, but I don't know why," he moans. "Ohhhhhh, boy." He's finally on his feet. Steadying him, I pull his walker closer, saying, "there, you hang on to that while I get your pajama pants off." Walter groans, and suddenly sits back down. I barely manage to snag his pj's and get them pulled down before he lands with a thump on the bed. "Oh, my," he complains again, then asks "Pajahmas? JAHM, not JAM?" "I say pa-JAM-mas," I tell him, "but that doesn't mean it's right." I pull his pajama pants down over his feet, fold them, and put them on his night stand.

"Okay, stand back up now." "Why?" "Because you don't have your pants on yet." "Oh, my," he observes. "It's terrible." "Yeah!" I agree. "Ready?" "Oh, yeah, I guess I'd better put them on," he says. He doesn't move. "All right," I tell him, "I'm ready." "What am I supposed to do?" he asks. "You've got to stand up," I remind him. "Stand up?" "Yup." I help him to his feet again. "Hang on to the walker. There you go." "Then what?" "I'm going to get these off, and put some clean underwear on, then we'll put your pants on." I deftly slide the disposable briefs off from under his shirt tail. "Hey!" he says, indignantly. "You're disrobing me!" I chuckle. "Oh, my." He shakes his head. "Oh, my!" "It's just shameful, isn't it?" I say sympathetically. "I come barging in here and drag you out of bed and pull your clothes off." "Yeah!" he moans.

I've managed to get his feet into the fresh briefs now, and pull them up over his hips. "There you go. Feel better?" "Oh, my," he says again, and starts to sit down. "Wait wait wait!" I say, trying to catch him. He stops, looking puzzled. "What wait wait wait?" "Don't sit yet," I tell him, "we still need to get your pants on." "Ooohhhh, my golly." He nods, and sits down anyway. I kneel down and get his feet into the pants, pulling them up to his knees. Retrieving his shoes from under the night stand, I start putting them on. "How do you spell that, 'wait'?" he asks. "W-A-I-T," I tell him. "That doesn't seem right," he mutters. "Why?" I ask, as I slip the second shoe on. "How would you spell it?" "I don't think that works," he says. "The shoe?" I ask, "Or the spelling?" "I thought it was W-E-I-G-H-T," he says. "That's the 'weight' for seeing how heavy you are," I tell him. Finishing his shoes, I say, "All right, now you've gotta stand up again." "I do?" "Yep." "Oh, goll-leee," he groans. "No rest for the weary," I agree, as I steady him against his walker and start to pull his pants up. "I know," he says. His pants are still around his hips, but he begins fumbling with the button. "That'll never reach," he says. "It doesn't work." "You might have to go on a diet, huh?" I tease. "Here, hang on here and let me see if I can do it." "I don't think you can get it," he tells me. "I bet I can. I'm a stubborn woman, you know." I pull the waistband up to its proper location, fasten the button and zip up the fly. "My goodness," he remarks as I buckle his belt. "It worked!"

"All right. Let's go brush your teeth." I wait until he has his walker going in the right direction, then walk ahead of him to get his toothbrush ready. Behind me, I hear a grunt, and another "oh, my." Walter's on the bed again. "Hey! You sat down!" I fuss. I let him sit while I get his toothbrush ready, then call, "okay Walter, come on, let's brush your teeth." "Why should I do that?" he wants to know. "So I can go eat?" "Yep. And then you can brush them again!" "That sounds like a waste of time," he grumbles. "Well, since you're awake anyway, it will give you something to do," I tease. He retorts, "Who says I'm awake?" We laugh, and I say, "well, then maybe it will help you wake up." "Ohhh, my," he moans again. Veering off course, he heads for the window instead of the bathroom. I follow his gaze to the sweater draped over a chair there. "Do you want your sweater on? Are you cold?" "I think so," he says. "I don't know." "Well, it will look good anyway. It's a nice sweater," I tell him. "Yeah, that works," he agrees. I help him put the sweater on, and steer him toward the bathroom again. "All right. Let's go brush your teeth." "Oh, boy."

When he's finished with his teeth, I guide him to his wheelchair and get him settled. "There you go. Want your glasses?" "What do I need those for?" he asks. "So you can see who's picking on you!" I tell him. He doesn't reach for the glasses, so I set them aside and start combing his hair. He mumbles something I can't hear. "Hmmmm?" "I'm trying to figure out what glasses are for, anyway." "Well," I say, "they're good for reading the paper. And watching TV." "You need glasses for that?" He sounds dubious. "Some people do," I tell him. "Can you do it without glasses?" He doesn't say anything. "There, all set," I say. "We're ready to roll." He groans. "Is it really all that bad?" I ask him, as we head for the dining room. "What?" he asks. "I don't know," I say. "Everything." "Is it that bad?" he repeats, and shakes his head. "I don't know. Is it that good?"

Have You Hugged Your Rabbit Today?

Researchers at the Ohio State University School of Medicine were studying atherosclerosis, observing the effects of a high-cholesterol, high-fat diet on the arteries of rabbits. At the conclusion of the test period, they discovered that one group of rabbits had 60% less blockage in their arteries than the rest, although all had been on the exact same diet. An investigation was launched to determine what factors might have influenced the outcome so drastically. What they discovered was that the person who was responsible for the care and feeding of that particular group of rabbits spent time holding, stroking and talking to each of them every day.

Several more controlled studies followed, in which all of the rabbits received the same diet, but one group of rabbits was held and petted each day, while the rest remained in their cages. Each time, the rabbits who received the extra attention showed 60% less physical damage from their unhealthy diet than the rest of the rabbits. Touching and talking turned out to be a crucial factor in reducing the development of atherosclerosis in rabbits.

So if you have rabbits, be sure to pet them and stroke them and talk to them every day. Especially if you feed them a high-fat diet!

Seriously... touch is powerful. Caring and being cared for are essential to life and health. Now you have one more good reason to reach out and touch someone today.

Let There be Light

Since starting nursing school I've done a lot of thinking about health and wellness and healing. The power of touch, and the importance of being cared for. The desperate need of a human being to be loved, and what a difference a smile or a touch can make.

A lot of various thought threads came together in my mind one night in my psychology class last term, when we were discussing a particular theory of personality and whether it was sound from a scientific point of view. I commented that perhaps the reason some things that feel right don't lend themselves well to scientific scrutiny is that we've made the mistake of assuming that science and reality are the same thing, when perhaps science is actually only a subset of reality.

I was raised in a very conservative fundamentalist Christian family, so the idea of prayer and faith and healing that can't be explained by medical science has never been hard for me to accept. And numerous scientific studies have borne out the fact that there does appear to be a significant effect on recovery as the result of prayer.

But other than church and the medical sciences I've always been a bit suspicious of other forms of healing. Science and church are completely segregated in my mind, as they seem to be for most Americans; anything that doesn't fit cleanly into one of those categories is just some sort of weird mystical stuff. The more I've thought about it though, the more I've come to think maybe we're all (science and religion) missing the boat.

I've always wondered what Jesus meant when he said we would do greater things than he did. Greater than raising the dead and walking on water or feeding 5000 people with one sack lunch? We've put men on the moon and split the atom and learned to fly. But until just recently I never thought to include technology when I considered what could possibly be greater than the things Jesus did. I simply assumed that miracles had to be compared with miracles. And technology, after all, is not miraculous. It's just the result of our learning to use the rules and tools that God built into the universe for us to master.

Maybe that's exactly what Jesus was talking about. Maybe healing and walking on water and multiplying food are based on some as-yet unknown (to us) principles of physics just like flying and splitting atoms and space travel. They're ALL pretty miraculous, if you think about it. I'm sure the disciples would have been just as impressed with seeing a flying machine as they were at seeing Jesus walk on water.

Maybe when Jesus healed the sick and controlled the weather, he was tapping into a source of power that's also available to us, something he knew was part of this world we live in just like all of the things that have allowed us to develop the technological "wonders" we now enjoy. Something that therefore could be compared with them, so that it made perfect sense for him to say that we'd do even greater things.

If that were true, would it make the miracles Jesus performed any less amazing? I don't think so. Whether he drew on his own special powers, or used powers available to any human, they all came from the same place in the beginning - the Creator of the power gets the credit. When I switch on a light in my house, I don't feel particularly smug at my ability to make light come forth. I just happen to know how to access what's already there for me to use.

I think that as long as we keep trying to make reality fit into our little boxes -- this is part of science, this is part of religion, and that other thing is just weird because I don't have a box for it -- we're missing the boat. I think maybe we need to all be a little more open-minded. We all have a lot to learn.