Sometime back, I came across a statement which goes like ” living a fantasy is better than living an act” What exactly does it mean!? I was bewildered for a moment thinking why are people so afraid of facing the reality? Why do they fancy themselves to live in a world which is outwardly, which only exists in our imagination or may not be a part of imagination anymore because our imaginations are nothing but fragments of reality.
An act is what is happening on a daily life. Living an act would mean addressing the situation and taking stock of the reality whereas living a fantasy would be trying to delude yourself in a world which does not exist, which does not have any evil in it, where there is hope everywhere, the good always wins over then evil and happiness is the outcome of every story. A world of fantasy is where there is no suffering, no lie no deceit and where desire, hope happiness, expectation still have their meanings alive.
It’s a world in which my six year old or my infant might be living in. My daughter watched a movie a couple of nights back with her dad called “In conversation with God”.
That night she woke up in horror sobbing and seemingly very perturbed. I was scared. Asked her what was the matter, and she told me that the movie that she saw had a poor old man in it who was very hungry, didn’t have any food to eat so he was eating food from the garbage, and people, instead of trying to help this old man out was making fun of him. I smiled at her calmed her down. Told her, well its just a story, a work of fiction and she shouldn’t worry about these things at all. She asked, so this man did have food to eat right? People don’t make fun of old poor people right? I told her yes, they don’t, and don’t get so upset about all these things. It was a work of fiction and nothing was for real.
She went back to sleep feeling confident that everything is fine and the world is not so bad after all and whatever they showed doesn’t happen for real.
That calm satisfied look on her face made me wonder how could I ever tell her that the reality is far more worse than that. How could I tell her that the world she is living in right now is pure fantasy. The reality out there is very cruel and ugly. How could I tell her that we are living in a seemingly intolerant society these days. There is anger, hatred, jealousy and revenge. There is a person who is so angry with the world that decides to go to a mall or school or church and start shooting randomly at the innocent defenseless crowd. What explanation do I have for the killings of babies by their own parents? An officer didn’t flinch away from killing an 8 month old pregnant marine that I had just seen in the news. People kill each other in the name of god .Call me old fashioned, but in the in the name of modernity the young crowd in their teens are talking or writing so voraciously about topics which are so explosive in nature. Nothing matters anymore, people don’t care, responsible or irresponsible that’s my life that’s what I hear. What explanations do I have, I was wondering.
Doesn’t happen for real, doesn’t happen for real, kept echoing and I realized,
“living a fantasy sure is better than living an act” at least we have something to look up to.A life of hope and happiness.
