Careful what you think about…

I am a big believer that we create our reality with our thoughts. Not just in the obvious way, like when you see a friend across a crowded room and wave at her and she looks right at you and then turns and walks away. If you assume she just didn’t see you, no harm-no foul. But if you assume she did see you and just snubbed you, well…if your brain is anything like my brain you begin a downward spiral into freakishly paranoid thoughts: What’s the deal? Is she mad at me? Why did she just blow me off? Maybe it was because of that time I smiled at that guy she really liked….25 years ago. You know how it goes…

I’m happy to report that at this stage of my life, I’ve learned to assume the best until I see evidence to the contrary, but there was a time… Anyway, the point is, your thought at that moment is what creates your EXPERIENCE of that moment; thus, your reality.

But there is another way in which our thoughts create our reality. For thousands of years Spiritual Masters and Gurus have been trying to explain it to us. More recently, it’s become known as the power of positive thinking, the power of attraction, and so on. In other words, if you focus your thoughts on something with enough dedicated intensity, it will, at some point, appear in your life…that is, if you cooperate with what the Universe sends along the way to help you get there. There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

That said, my current work in progress (over 15,000 words so far) takes place in a world where magic exists, but the entire population is dedicated to suppressing it because it’s so out of control it will destroy the world if they don’t. The bad guys in my little world ride around on giant, horse-sized, wasps. Every bit as nasty as their real world counterparts, these wasps pop people’s heads off with their mouth pincers or stab them through the heart with their over-sized stingers.

For the last few days I’ve been writing some rather distasteful scenes in which these characters are riding around on these giant wasps (some of whom are fire-breathing) and wreaking havoc everywhere they go. I’ve been staring at wasp photos and imagining how one might ride one, how they might fly into battle,  and how they might be used in an ambush.  Dedicated to writing scenes the reader can see in their mind’s eye, I’ve visualized in my own mind with enough intensity to raise my own blood-pressure. (And question what kind of person I am that I would write such scenes in the first place…)

And, according to the laws of the Universe, I was standing in the shower this morning, minding my own business and shampooing my hair, when right before my eyes appeared the biggest, fattest, wasp I’ve ever seen. He seemed to be determined to land on my face (or perhaps he wanted to snap my head off with his mouth pincers?). Trust me, you’ve never seen anyone get out of the shower faster.

Perhaps I should spend a few days envisioning and writing scenes where characters give each other bags of free money…

P.S. As I posted this…another big fat wasp flew between my face and my monitor. No joke.