One day, back when I was in college, I was with my dad, standing along the railing of his back deck overlooking his farm. Fir-clad hills on all sides gave way to a little green valley. The sun was shining in a perfectly blue summer sky.

As we looked over the beautiful scene, he said, “I just have a hard time believing that none of this is real.” My dad was a spiritually minded man, and I respected his thoughts. He had studied Christian Science, which explains the unreality of matter in light of the infinitude, or allness, of Spirit, God. But something struck me as not quite right about what he said: It was a denial of the beauty and good all around us.

Since then I’ve spent a lot of time and effort looking deeply into what is and isn’t real. And I’ve found that this has brought a bigger, fuller sense of the beauty, liveliness, joy, and goodness all around me.