It seems to me that we cannot live in this world without disconnecting from it, for we are real and it is not! If it were real, we would all have had nervous breakdowns by now and there wouldn’t be enough concrete for the asylum.

Vicki, for example, was born with a great many valuable attributes. She was kind and smart, but she was shy. The other kids thought she was being snooty; no, she was introverted. She read like a whiz but was abysmal in arithmetic. It was only in certain subjects that she shone.

Vicki grew up to be a perfectionist and an agoraphobe. She was terrified of social situations. She married a man she had grown up with and he adored her. But gradually her social anxiety became a nuisance to him. She would have loved to get rid of it, but it was bigger than she was.

She and her husband moved to Atlanta after their wedding. He went to work and she stayed home alone all day. Their first child was colicky and screamed day and night for months. The second, a girl, was easier and she did not breastfeed her like she did the first. When the girl was seven, she died of cancer.

Vicki had always been interested in the spiritual path; now she gave herself over to it. Years of intense study followed. Gradually her social anxiety fell away but she remained introverted and happiest alone.

When he was 63 her husband died of cancer just as her daughter had. She and her son continued to live in the house they had moved into when he was twelve.

Now Vicki has published 3 books and writes daily about her spiritual journey. The other paragraphs written about Vicki are unimportant. Now she lives another life altogether.

She has seen through the great disconnect between what people say and what people believe. She knows that society is a lie in and of itself and that it forces people into roles they hate to play. Vicki just sits alone and ponders why she still remains a perfectionist when it doesn’t matter. She also is constantly examining life and trying to learn from her and it eludes her. She just can’t grasp it!

She often feels unsafe, as if she is on trial. Now she knows that others feel that way, too. The world is an illusion that each one of us keeps perpetuating until we don’t any more. Then nothing happens and then something happens and then nothing happens again. Get the picture?

Now she knows that life cannot be grasped or even understood. It goes on all by itself. When we get up, we work and play until bedtime comes. And that happens until the day we die, and no one quite understands that yet. Understanding, as you probably know, is the booby prize.

Vicki Woodyard