In our lives, we are encountered by many situations that make us uncomfortable, upset, distressed, and even traumatized. We, as humans, do not seem to take change very well, or at least as well as we should. We live in a reality created by our society, something that is real to us is considered simply the norm, cars driving up and down streets, kids walking obnoxiously but peacefully throughout the hallways, and life seems well. When someone witnesses a violent brawl or is involved in a car accident, they say the whole experience was “unreal.” Why do we say this? Well, just through the use of these words, we can find explanation. It is not real. It is a traumatic illusion, or at least our brains tricking us into believing it is. Some faster than others smooth out these bumps in their life with the brain’s passive ability to put things behind us, in our past, and move back into the norm.
Our brains are accustomed to predictability, in fact, unpredictability is the main reason for a lot of emotions and experiences our bodies either fear or get pleasure from. The reason scary movies are so scary is because there is an extreme unpredictable factor in the situation. We find the killers and monsters in these movies so frightening because in a situation on the screen where our brains would never expect a guy to run out and murder everyone in a small town or a possessed doll to wreak havoc in a building, they do. And our brains say, “No way, I don’t like that, that is not the way it always was.” If we lived in a world where murders in black cloaks wielding knives ran the street everyday, we probably wouldn’t find it so shocking. And in that case, we’d probably watch movies where nothing happens except a normal day, and it was creep us the hell out. If that example didn’t help, imagine switching the life of a prisoner in a jail with an accountant. The prisoner would be pissed and destroy the office because it is so bleak, dull and uncontrolled. The accountant would probably piss himself and mope around in his cell all day. All this because their brains, which would predict that when they went to bed the night before, they’d wake up to the same day, was instead given the slip and put into a world of zero compatibility with their mindset, a world of unpredictability, a world of illusion.
Illusion seems like a world that should only be used to describe a magic trick or 3D tv’s, but its meaning is much more dynamic and open than that. Illusion is unpredictability. The concept that the norm is gone, and that our minds are changing, for better or worse. If a couple adopts a kid and raises that child in their household as their kid no questions asked, is that an illusion? Is that child growing up with their head clouded by lies to protect their sanity? So they can feel just like every other kid on the block? Or is it reality? Is it the child’s reality, the world that they live in, believe in, confide in, survive in? Obviously to someone outside looking in, this is illusion. It is far from the truth they know, and they themselves growing up with two parents that did belong to them genetically in a nuclear family, of course they see this as abnormal. It is out of their norm. Though to the child with adopted parents, when he is finally revealed the truth behind his life, he will most likely break down. Just like when the murderer in a horror movie takes his first victim, the illusion of reality is shattered, and the game has begun. His mind will reel, he will feel the adrenaline of his normal life crashing, and most likely, in layman’s terms, flip a shit. In the short run, he is likely to cling onto his seemingly perfect life and the way it once was, attempting to cover himself with the illusion once again. These attempts for the most part will be futile, only lasting short whiles, until his brain either accepts the inevitable truth, or breaks down to something different. Overall, he has been taken out of his comfort zone, which is the key to finding the truth in illusion vs reality. You can only realize illusion when it is contrasted to your reality.
Now, everyone has different realities, we all live in different worlds, in the way that we all experience it differently. The reason ghosts are real and not real at the same time. Things are real to us when the people we think are real think it is real as well. Would someone be an illusion if everyone believed they were? Wouldn’t the person believe that they were not real, because of all of the evidence leading to that conclusion? We question the unreal when it is out of our comfort zones, outside of our regular predictability. We know there is a possibility that we will die everyday, but since it hasn’t happened for so long, we begin to believe that it can’t happen. We also don’t attempt to risk our lives everyday either, so the idea and thought of death gets pushed to the back of our brains. We don’t think about it to the extent of how possible it actually is. This makes the thought of dying an illusion, where for someone who is close to death slowly realizes the possibility of it, and realizes it exponentially. Soon enough, they will come to accept it when given the proper amount of time.
Early death is devastating. It is scarier than the murderer in a movie, or the car crash that rattles us. It is the car crash everyday. It is being forced to watch the murderer everyday. The day our parents tell us we were adopted. It is our realities being permanently changed. In this case, for mostly worse. Fear in a movie and in an accident that leaves us shaken is different than the fear of death. Life reverts after the movie is over and once the car is fixed and you are healed up. Death doesn’t go back. It changes everything. It is not an experience that can be recalled as a memory, it is a known fact; your brain predicts you will eat something today, you will go to school or work, and that person is gone. What once was an illusion has now become reality. A life being removed from your world is the feeling of that once pushed to the back of your head reality-turned-illusion, rushing to the front and reverting. And it hurts. You knew the reality was inevitable, but it hadn’t happened in so long that you had forgotten it was possible, and in your own mind turned it impossible.
So. Illusion versus Reality. There is no precedent. Our realities show their faces in ways that we need to slowly come accustomed to. For the hour and a half you watch your horror movie, you ARE expecting a murderer to pop out at any moment. If you can adjust to it fast enough, you will be less shocked. That movie will be your reality for the time it is on. The idea of illusion was created by the man who didn’t believe in your reality, and in turn, by you who didn’t believe in his. Illusion and reality is good and evil. It is based on perspective and personal belief. Reality and illusion are not wrong and right, reality and illusion are relative.
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