The Difference Between Facts and Feelings

I’m tired of writing about nothing.

I’ve got puffs of air, feelings and thoughts, all over this site. And they’re good. But they lack the substance of facts, weighted and true.

A lot of my life does.

See, that’s what they don’t tell you about being emotional, about being in-tune and reflective. It’s that when you create hazy castles in weed smokes, daydreams and ambitions, you lose your trail. Your mind is a forest, and you get trapped inside with trees if you let yourself.

Sometimes it’s worth escaping.

***

There’s a bias against facts.

Online, you can create yourself. In your head, the world is flexible like a dream. You’re the worst, or the best, or somewhere in between. You win arguments that pop up in your head, and fight and fuck strangers off of fleeting looks.

But you don’t.

Paths diverge between the facts and the feelings. There’s what’s going on and how we choose to interpret those things, for better or worse. If facts are a straight line, feelings are waves; sometimes higher, sometimes lower. They average out, sure, but the highs and lows only take you further from what you can bank on.

How much drama in your life is opt in. How much could you say “who cares?” to? People, places, things and worries; fuck it. What are your insecurities that don’t propel you?

How much energy is worrying and daydreaming taking up from doing?

A lot, I’d guess. It does for me. I’d say I spend about 40% of my life being excessively amped about things that might happen and the other 40% of my life miserable and spiteful about the successes that I haven’t found.

That’s a lot of energy spent spinning in thoughts. And not a lot of energy, say, learning Spanish.

But that’s human! It’s human nature to obsess, to stress, to build ourselves up and break ourselves down. But rather than accept and build around that- cultivating virtual worlds and finding snarky sites- we forget that it’s addictive. Not in the plain, tofu use of the word, but with all the connotations.

We do it because we like it. And we do it without thinking.

It’s exciting to hate yourself. It’s energizing. Same with the other end; hours slip through my hands to Drake albums, amped and living in unearned success.

There’s a high and a crash. It’s the wavelength, and we pursue higher jumps and falls rather than finding peace in the stable, calm line of fact.

***

I don’t know much about meditation, but I’ve done a it a little. I don’t do much about anything, because I’m a staggeringly terrible person with a filthy room and a weak, sputtering work ethic (see the waves?) but I’ve tried it.

I like it.

There’s something about turning off your brain and forcing yourself to deal with- and then ignore- the facts. The running faucet of thoughts and doubts gets silenced. You’re off the internet hamster wheel.

For a moment, all you are is you.

That’s why I didn’t meditate. Or stop. Or think. I didn’t like me. Still don’t. But at least now I have some understanding of the facts of me, and of the truths that are harder to shake and rustle. That I can live in the moment and project extremes out unfairly to the past or future. That I talk a much bigger game than I do. That I opt-in to insecurities and stresses and worries because I think I should, not because I care.

And that I can recalibrate.

When you learn to decipher the difference between the real and your perceptions you open up the chance to change yourself.