The Real World Is – By Brian

Recently, I bought a car. When people learned of the payments I would have to make, some said, “Welcome to the real world.”

Well, one night, as I lay awake thinking, it occurred to me that they were wrong. As the real world goes, I’m a goldfish in a bowl. I’m stifled but sheltered. The real world is in front of me, but little gets in.

So as my mind pondered what that means, I decided that the real world isn’t car payments or rent, owning a house or anything like that.

The real world is:

  • losing a child to death, divorce or removal.
  • losing all you own through misfortune or mismanagement.
  • fighting your way through addiction.
  • fighting for your life in struggle with disease, violence, nature…
  • fighting for your sanity in a world that wants to rob it.
  • being totally alone, even in the middle of a crowd.
  • being paralyzed, or blind, or mentally challenged in a world that sees imperfection as undesirable.
  • being overweight, through any means, in a Barbie world.
  • being a child. It used to be carefree, but now they seem to experience all the negatives more harshly. And there are a lot of them, including death, divorce, homelessness, unemployment, sexual abuse, social pressure to conform to a present pattern, social inequality, etc.

These things are the real world. I’m content to be a fish.