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Are you real? Am I real? Or are we just in a ‘reality’ show?
By Gary | November 25, 2008
I ran across one of the oddest news stories today, explaining that many people in America are honestly convinced their entire lives are not "real," but that they are living in a "reality show" of some sort.
You remember that Jim Carey movie from some years back called, I think, "The Truman Show"? In the show the lead character discovers that his entire life is being lived on a huge, elaborate sound stage and being filmed 24/7. I'm sure you either saw it or heard a lot about it. It was fascinating, and it was downright spooky, too.
It seems that therapists are now reporting regularly that they have patients coming to them convinced that they're being misled or "fooled" or somehow manipulated without their knowledge and that they are actually "Trumans" living in something like that plot.
Amazing.
How's YOUR life today? Is it real? For that matter, can you actually "prove" that I'm real? I might actually be a conglomerate of 15 writers with too much time on their hands merely pretending to be one Old Guy posting regularly on this blog. (Don't know, really, why "we" would do that instead of finding something to do that makes MONEY with the effort, but, hey, who REALLY knows?)
I once thought about a plot for a story in which the entire universe is only a computer construct being fed into decaying bodies with only the brains kept alive and hooked up to a network of computers and just enough nutrients to keep the brains flourishing. Okay, so I waited and did nothing with that idea. Now that "The Matrix" and it's sequels are out, I've probably been waaaay outdated on that one!
Something about life opens us to concerns about "control" or perhaps just simple desire that there should be cause and effect relationships in our lives. And when something happens that's beyond our control or seems extremely harsh or unfair, we cannot tolerate it. Hence, we decide there's something going on here that ought not to be.
Don't let such common feelings get out of control. If you do, you begin to head toward that "Truman syndrome" mentioned above -- that's what therapists are calling it now, the Truman syndrome.
Instead, just go with the flow, and when life knocks you down, pick yourself up, dust yourself up, and start all over again. (Ought to be a song like that, you think?)
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