City Life

Your Focus Determines Your Reality

by Tania Filidis / February 7, 2018

“You are just one big feeling, with eyes, lips, and ears,” said Sean.

Why do our emotions (more for women than for men, usually) seem so very important, real and even tangible? They can seem even more real than the factual reality around us. It’s like our feelings secretly rule over our lives.

And, honestly, what can be done? Kill the feelings? Well, if you kill feelings, you kill the woman (and some men too).

A while ago, Sean and I were watching Star Wars — one movie each day. I became an ardent Star Wars fan in my late twenties (I am Ukrainian, after all. I wasn’t exactly growing up on the deep green Yoda wisdom, you know).

The cool battle scenes of droids, humans and other weird creatures from other planets are absolutely marvelous. And what can really compare with the “uszzhzhzzhhh” sound of the Jedi swords? Or the smooth catlike movements and acrobatic skills, right?

What subconsciously won my heart was the Jedi saying “follow your feelings” throughout the whole 12 hours of the story. I even smiled and felt like one of them, thinking that I would probably make one of the greatest Jedi in intergalactic history as I follow my feelings 10,000 times a day.

So, there’s lots of interesting stuff they talk about, but one thing caught my attention (and I detected an expression of glee on Sean’s face as he was there to hear it and now reminds me of it whenever I need to snap out of the flood of distracting emotions). “Your focus determines your reality” was what Qui-Gon Jinn said to Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Whoa.

Like that time I couldn’t stop thinking about these red shoes I’d been wanting to buy for weeks. I was dreaming about them. I convinced myself that I would never be happy and complete as long as I didn’t have them. My reality was determined by my lack of beautiful red shoes. The “real” reality was that I had millions of shoes already, and these red ones weren’t going to save my life. I just need to keep focusing and refocusing.

Although the Force is strong with me, I do need occasional help with determining my reality.

Red Shoes by Robert Metz

Header photo by Simon Rae

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Reply Dennis February 7, 2018 at 9:12 pm

If you will allow me to nerd out here for a minute:

1. It’s called a light saber, not a “Jedi sword”
2. “following your feelings” refers to feeling the force. As in letting it flow though you and working with it instead of brute forcing control over it. In fact the Jedi Knights were trained in actively avoiding emotions and emotional connections to people and things . Because they were supposed to be absolutely impartial judges and mediators and strong emotions were an easy path of corruption for the dark side.
🙂

but seriously, you are 100% right that strong desires shape the way you perceive reality. People are a to quick to exclaim that they can’t li’ve without their phone, social media, television etc etc etc yet these are all mere distractions and easily discarded.
Desire is often seen as the first step on the road of unhappiness.