What is Real?

I walked out in my backyard here on the northern California coast and green wild grass is coming up all over and the same for the front yard. It's good to see everything not brown and dead everywhere like one sees when there is a bad drought. El Nino has sort of fixed that (at least for now) with 136% of normal snowfall in the Sierras and enough rain here where I am (at least for now).

I could feel everyone around the world as I was walking around in the sunlight right now outside. Though it's partly cloudy and 54 degrees Fahrenheit presently I was feeling people sort of feeling the "overwhelm" of a new year and thinking about all the other past years of their lives and people dying and people being born and everything that happens in between and the overwhelm of all that which often makes me wonder how many of us are "Tough Enough" to watch all the deaths and births around us and all the loves and fears of people all over throughout their lives.

So, I was thinking about what is "Real" for people in general?

Reality appears to be a mix of physical reality, fantasies and beliefs people come up with from themselves, relatives and friends.

And this is all related to the cultures we grow up in. I have always been surprised how things that might make someone kill themselves in the U.S. or Europe or other places might just make people laugh in other more difficult countries to survive in.

Because most of the world is more adult by 4 years old than most people in the U.S. are by 25 or 30.

Is this a good thing? It likely depends upon your point of view.

When I was 4 I was grown up in many ways. I expected to be beat up by other children. I expected to be beaten by parents or aunts or uncles or Grandfathers or literally any adult because of the way things were in 1952 when I was 4.

Now things have changed a lot and I find children treated more like pets or cartoon characters and that worries me a lot. Because if you don't understand harsh realities by age 4 you likely never will.

And this is the real problem of treating children like pets rather than human beings. Pets might be okay if you are a good master as long as they live.

But, they will never hold a job or likely have puppies or any of that because they are fixed now by the Humane society often before you get them.

So, treating children like pets or cartoon characters tends to just make them dysfunctional as adults an subject to drug abuse and alcoholism rather than just facing the harshness of real life head on.

However, though I expected to be beaten (if I did something wrong or harmed someone) I also knew I was being  "Raised by a Village" sort of like "It takes a Village to raise a child".

So, though the harshness of life was there everyone I knew also took responsibility for me growing up right as well.