Our minds don’t just distort reality—they hide it. Not out of malice, but out of self-preservation. The raw, unfiltered world is too much. It’s chaos, uncertainty, death, betrayal, awe, beauty, loss—all at once. So the mind builds a narrative, a little safe zone made of stories: who we are, what the world is, why things happen.
It gives us filters. Puts sunglasses on our soul so we don’t burn out staring at the truth.
Sometimes it paints everything with hope. Sometimes with despair. Either way, it keeps the full reality at arm’s length so we can function.
But now and then, strong emotional circumstances, rips a hole in the curtain. Depression crushes the scaffolding. And we glimpse something underneath. It’s not poetic or tragic or meaningful. It just is. And that glimpse? That’s the closest thing to truth we get.
Take a fairly recent time when your outlook on life really altered, before and after grieving, or depression. Something big like that.
Now place those side by side and compare and contrast your view of the world before and after. Take your time, go deep into it and above all be honest with yourself.
Now, subtract both those viewpoints and what’s left is reality.
Random Acts of Eccentricity 
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