Fantasy vs. Reality

Sometimes (ok maybe more than sometimes) I feel like I am the main character in a sitcom. That there is a studio audience to the right or left of me. That I need to get in the quick quip or a joke and the audience would laugh with me. The line between fantasy and reality is blurred, at least in my mind, and it comes out in my physical action.

Now, I bring this up, because in the last two decades or so, it seems that the line between fantasy and reality has blurred in our world in total. Think about it. We have had a supervillain carry out a comic book like plot to bring down two major buildings in New York. We have had secrets unearthed about people that make soap operas look like child's play. And now we have a president who not only never served in any form of government prior to his taking office, but a man who lashes out at people through social media and allegedly used the Russians to help him get elected.

What has happened to blur this line of fantasy and reality?

Personally, and I clearly don't speak for everybody, I feel it has to do with the simple fact that reality sucks.

Yes, people. Reality sucks. At least, what we hear most often about reality sucks. War, racism, violence, disasters, protests, terrorism etc. It sucks. And especially with social media, it is an echo chamber. So what's a way to do distract ourselves from this fact? By burrowing ourselves in fantasy. Where problems are mostly solved very neatly; the world is more black and white; and the end results are most of the time positive.

And when we are forced back into the grimy land of reality, we try to take a little bit of fantasy with us. This is what I was referring to in the beginning with my behavior. It is done in order to make existing in reality a bit more palatable.

One final note about this point. Actors, actresses and writers amongst others are interesting because their milieu is fantasy. I wonder if that's why some of them get screwed in the head.
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Now another way that reality could become more palatable is if the positive things in life are more represented. And that brings me to yesterday's solar eclipse, and the coverage of it. I feel back in the day, there used to be more of these specials for scientific discoveries and feats. Yesterday was a delight for me because it was the news showing some positivity and excitement. The last time I felt that type of positivity from the news was the "Miracle on the Hudson" coverage when Sully Sullenberger entered the consciousness.

It is a sad fact that negative news creates more buzz than positivity. It's always been that way. But with 24 hour news channels and the echo chamber of social media, the negative is exaggerated even more so than ever.  There needs to be more of a balance of negative and positive.

My first official post talked about losing the sense of wonder in us. Yesterday showed that that was not the case. We just need to see it more often. Then I think we could feel a little bit better about ourselves as a people and not have to burrow ourselves in fantasy.

Because the lines are starting to blur and fantasy is becoming all too real.

What do you think? Comment below.