Reality is a big thing these days. You find it everywhere. Reality shows, reality checks, reality thinking, the real-deal. But what is reality...? Really...?
Empirical-minded folks quickly parade statistics. The ultimate real-deal, they say. But as anyone past puberty knows by now, stats are not facts, because facts are not always the facts. Statistics are like bikinis: What they reveal is suggestive, what they hide is vital.
What then about our culture's obsession with reality-TV? In some ways the putrefaction of democracy, these shows pretend to let real people do real things really right there in front of us. Even if what they were doing were of actual interest to me, why in heaven's name would I care to have it in my living room? Turn the channel, you say? No help there, six more of the same.
OK, lets consider the ultimate reality: Deity. Is there or is there not a supreme being? Atheists and theists debate this endlessly. (Agnostics take the easy way out and shrug "Who Knows?). At the end of the theological day. each party goes his or her own way. Meanwhile, if there really is a supreme being, he/she/it must surely be amused by our small,pinched sense of reality down here.
Finally, let us consider the season's first snowfall. Herein rests the true test of what each of us sees as reality.
When I look out I see trouble, trouble right here in River City. Walks to be shoveled, roofs to be checked, streets to be navigated, expressways to survive. Hateful! On the other and sweeter hand, there are the children. The children whose wondrous eyes look out upon this wondrous white Panamas as beautiful. joyful. a play-land just for them.
Conclusion...?
The reality of stats and facts, of television and theology, are all well and good. But the reality of a first snowfall in the mind of a child has just gotta be the best reality of all. Snowballs, anyone...???
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