Reality Bites

Reality is like that Lego that your kids left in the middle of the hallway: you might wish that your children were more responsible, you might wish you didn't have to go pee at 2:00 AM, you might wish that you weren't barefoot, but when you step on the Lego, all those wishes come to naught.  I have had several conversations recently about how we can sometimes get so caught up wishing things were different that we become utterly unable to make positive changes in how things are.  Often the first step in overcoming a crisis is breaking out of the mental inertia that wants to insist that everything is fine and dandy.  Thus, most of  us live life in some form of denial, because reality is rather unpleasant.
When a crisis presents itself, you have two choices: stay the course, or make a change.  Sometimes, especially if you happen to be British, staying the course is the way to go.  Other times, and this is more or less the American way, it's time to come up with some new solution.  Neither one of these approaches is foolproof, and the relative merits of either approach is largely dependent on the reality of the crisis.
In either instance, the effectiveness of your response will depend greatly on how accurately you have assessed the reality.  Scientific types would lead you to believe that this is simply a matter of gathering data and "crunching the numbers."  Because they have this illusion that their particular sort of data collection and information synthesis is "objective," meaning without the bias and imperfection of more subjective forms of judgment.
This would be wonderful if it were true, however, the reality is that, earthquakes, hurricanes and catastrophic meteor collisions aside, most of our profound crises are human in origin.  And humans are a tangled mess of emotions, beliefs, psychoses, neuroses and general messiness.  We are decidedly subjective snarls of prejudice and false assumptions, of which are largely unaware.  Failure to adequately compensate for this reality is exceedingly hazardous.
While it is important to try and grasp reality with all the tools available to you, it is important to remember that you will never be able to grasp total reality.  It is tempting to think that somehow you could access the power of seeing things completely, but you never will.  Thus it is always possible that we will step on that Lego in the middle of the night, unless we get rid of our lousy, sloppy children and all their infernal toys.
Life is messy, but it is life.