Loving what’s real makes it easier to see what you may tend to turn away from, such as facts about your health, finances, or relationships, or what is happening down in the basement of your own mind. You might consider, as I am lately, the real effects adding up of personal health practices, compassion or anger toward others, and choices about how best to use the remaining years and days of this life.

One way to love what’s real is to listen or look for it coming to you from others. How are your friends or family really doing inside? What do they need? Where does it hurt? How could you help? And how, perhaps, could your own real needs be better met in these relationships?

Last, what’s real, what’s true in your country, and world? The basics are usually pretty easy to see. Who’s getting richer and who’s getting poorer? Is the ice cap melting at the North Pole?

There’s a widespread idea these days that we can’t really know what’s happening with big things like national governments, or even if we could know it doesn’t much matter. I think that’s crazy. Truth is truth at any size, and if it matters whether a child is actually learning to read or a plane is actually safe to fly, then it matters whether a foreign government actually manipulated a U.S. presidential election while the candidate it favored cheered on their efforts.

We are intimately affected by real events in the halls of power both here at home and on the other side of the world. When someone tells you, “Don’t worry, you don’t need to know the truth, you don’t need to worry about that” . . . you usually do. Same with politics: any person, party, or government that says facts don’t matter, or makes it harder to find them, or spews lies to crowd out the truth is attacking the foundation of democracy. Sometimes you can’t stop them from doing this – but they can never stop you from knowing what is real, and what matters.

~Rick Hanson

finding what is true and steady….

inquiry for today~ what will you connect to?

why I feel….

Be happy for this moment.

This moment is your life.

~Omar Khayyam