By Jarret Liotta

WESTPORT — I had the unique pleasure of getting to speak to the Sunrise Rotary Club on Friday morning.

Despite the ungodly hour — and exposure to some of their stranger customs, like singing “God Bless America” at eight in the morning — I found them to be a kind and likable bunch that clearly strives to do great works on behalf of our diverse little community.

Along with offering pearls of my peppery wisdom relating to journalism and such, I fielded a series of questions about the town, our product and exactly what’s behind the process of overseeing an editorial operation.

Gasping for Answers

This, in turn, prompted one question that got me to contemplate the malleable substance of truth and its relation to subjective realities.

I tried to answer intelligently, as I always strive to both sound & look good in the intimidating face of the public, forever hoping to deflect attention from the likelihood that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

In between incoherent gasps and long pauses, in which rotary members might have suspected I was about to lose consciousness from lack of air through my dank mask, I found myself waxing into strange esoteric ramblings involving metaphysics and varying perceptions of so-called reality.

Reality Shift

When I regained consciousness — and this was only after the Rotarians encircled me and began singing again until I was startled awake — I realized that it was no longer possible to answer the question of what is absolute truth.

Think about that! We as a collectively conscious species have gotten to a point where our views of reality are so splintered, we can no longer claim to recognize a collective reality!!

This is very interesting … I’m not sure yet what it means or what we’re supposed to do with it, but it’s really, really interesting …

1984 Bummer or Mystical Magic Opportunity?

Fans of the remarkably prescient novel 1984 by George Orwell will remember that the terrifying new order of Big Brother’s Totalitarian society allowed a complete denial and restructuring of obvious facts. The hero of the book, in fact, had a job reviewing previously published articles and rewriting them so that the facts would be changed to mesh with the government’s new and ever-changing claims.

Now today, with myriad cameras covering our moves on the street and Apple products listening in on our conversations at home, we’ve pretty much arrived at the society so many of us always feared.

Along with that is prevalent dissension about general facts, which not only now comes from fringe conspiracy theorists or old-fashioned village idiots, but social and political leaders, judges, journalists, hairdressers … just about anyone, really …

This, of course, has many people upset. This has many people fighting against the changing tide of what they see as a blatant disregard for, and abandonment of, The Truth …

“… Surrender to the Void …”

Yet there’s a rather exciting and intriguing alternate way to look at this shift — namely to consider that we have personal power to ultimately craft our realities the way we want to. So that even as one person or program may be painting one picture, another can create something just as radically different and real.

Just as quantum physics have introduced us to a remarkably weird new physical reality that defies the traditional laws of Newtonian physics, so does emerging understanding of the weird and wonderful powers of observation and intention point us toward a future of unlimited possibility.

(Did you know that science has proven on numerous occasions that our focus and attention actually influence the physical world we experience — literally change its makeup?!)

So while there might be ominous rumblings from sour miscreants and silly people who poo-poo different versions of our standard reality realm, maybe the ideal response is to likewise refuse delivery on their version of reality and just create your own.

Denial

“That’s crazy!” I hear you saying.

But what IS crazy anymore? Who are any of us to discount any of the possibilities on the table?

(I’m just going to deny you said that.)

Denial is not only a powerful tool, but a wonderful sedative and potentially brilliant elixir.

Of course, as I indicated, I haven’t worked it all out yet, so don’t ask me to explain details.

Instead, the next time we meet — at Trader Joe’s or Gold’s, Sherwood Island, by the river, the library or perhaps the dump — feel free to ask about the state of the town, the nation, and life in general in this increasingly bizarre corner of sidereal space … and I’ll tell you the Ultimate Truth:

“I guess it depends on who you ask!”

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