Life is a Little Bit Real...a Little Bit Not...and All about Perception

When I spend time in personal meditation, I'm always taken to a peaceful place in my dreams...the countryside of Ireland. Why does this place which I have never actually ventured to seem to hold serenity for me I wonder? Perhaps because it is somewhere I have never been and thus reality has not pocessed my ideal of Ireland. For example, I saw the ocean for the first time when I was about twenty-one years old. I knew of the ocean before then of course, only from television and movies. Because my pre-conceived ideal of the ocean was that of flawless sun tanned beauties, I had prepared myself to get there and see just that...but strangely enough, the people whom visited the beach on the same days as I, were not that of perfectly toned women in their early twenties but rather, ordinary women who looked like me...or 'gasp' not quite as good looking as me. So, shall I ruin my pre-conceived ideal's of Ireland and visit this country...or shall I keep my prestine Ireland country-side exactly that...prestine? This isn't much different than the pre-conceived notions of a child hoping to one day meet her 'knight in shining armor' only to discover in dating; there is no knight, much less shining armor to recognize him by. So, I guess life has its ways of disappointing us...without doing anything to be rationale cause for disappointment. In having made these observations as it relates to realistic life versus dream life, I can only assume true happiness is but simply a state of perseption. Well in THAT case...let the happiness continue and emerge one moment at a time, one day at a time, one year at a time and do not look back.