I’ve come across a lot of crazy things that I didn’t know before, since exploring the internet and opening my eyes up to new websites and stuff, like plasma cutting. Didn’t know those things even existed. It makes me realize that there are a lot of things I’m still ignorant to. After so many years in formal education and living 26 years on this earth, I am still pretty ignorant. Not stupid, but ignorant. I don’t believe in inherently stupid people. I believe that we all deserve chances to learn, and it is when we choose not to is when we are condemned as “stupid.” When we turn our backs on the very face of knowledge while it stares us in the face is when we are deemed “stupid.” When we are given the opportunity to learn something outside of our realm of comfort zone, and when we refuse to accept it or even admit its existence because the very fact that it’s there frightens the hell out of us, we can then be coined as “stupid.” Outside of then, no one is stupid to me.

In yesterday’s training on psychosomatic disorders and how to treat them, I learned something incredibly fascinating that I did not know of before. Perhaps I suspected it in my years of study and experience working with people, but I doubted its fact. The simple lesson that I learned was:

Reality and fantasy are stored in the same place in the brain.

That means that whatever our memories are of one certain event, regardless of the perspective we chose to take at the time, they are stored in the same place of the brain. The brain cannot distinguish between what is fact and what is fiction. What is reality to us may not be reality to someone else, but in our brain, it doesn’t matter. It is “real.” It becomes fact. If we believe in something long enough, we can convince our brain, and therefore ourselves, that it is true.

This is the answer to depression, to “severe sadness” (as directly translated in other languages where the word “depression” does not exist), to behavioral modification systems, to everything that can explain the human condition in all its glory. By curing depression, we simply must convince ourselves that happiness is real. Well, I suppose the “simply” part is the hard work, and it’s not exactly simple. But I live by the phrase my yoga teachers, who are true wise angels in this world, keep telling us in class, “Fake it till you make it.” You practice something so much that it gets stored in that “reality” part of your brain, regardless of whether or not in real actuality it is true, and it becomes true.

And therefore, I believe in my happiness. I believe I am beautiful. I believe I can do anything. I believe I can be anyone’s friend. I believe I am invincible to the negative touch. I believe I can look at life with a positive life in every corner, every aspect. I believe in the human spirit. I believe I am strong.

And it must be true, because all those things, I just stored in my brain.