What is real?

I'm also taking Adolescent Development with Dr. Coyne (excellent), and I just finished reading my adolescent book this week, The Giver....

love

love

loved it!

Great book, fast read, and I would totally recommend it. After reading the book it really made me think about all the little things that we under appreciate in our world, the color, feelings, memories, the joy, the pain, the beauty. And I thought it really tied in with our lecture today when we talked about what is reality, and how real is media. 

Media is wonderful because it can portray reality or branch off into a fantastical world.....

Although this distopian book wasn't reality, it made me reflect on what makes my reality so great. Media allows us to capture reality and share it with others. The other day I was outside on a run, and the sunset was magnificent, so I took a picture- sadly this picture doesn't do the sunset justice, but it gives you a glimpse of what my reality was after that run. 

Reality is magnificent, beautiful, and full of happiness, and love. 

Reality can also really suck a lot of the time, some days we feel down, depressed, sad.

Reality brings pain, stress, and disappointment.

Reality is was makes us human, it is the human experience. We take it with all the good and bad because we own it, reality is who we are- right here, right now- the good and the bad. 

We each choose our own realities....no two realities are the same.

Example: The other day when it was raining, I was walking on campus, when I realized that I was also walking on a battlefield, where innocent earthworms were being slaughtered with no chance of survival. They only came on the sidewalks thinking they would be safe from drowning in the dirt, little did they know they would meet an untimely death from a careless giant's foot. I, being a very earthworm-friendly person, have always made sure to try my hardest not to kill tiny living creatures in their own environments (if they are in my house it's a different scenario  but  if I'm outside, then I'm in their turf). I was sad to notice that worm after worm was being stomped and didn't know what to do to help, besides make sure I didn't step on any of them. Perhaps you're like me and do the same thing? But perhaps you've never ever thought about caring about the stupid worm's life being taken under your foot.

My reality is different then yours, as weird as an example this might be (really this post is just to raise worm-death awareness at BYU during rainstorms).....but I'm sure there are things you think of that aren't currently part of my reality. By reading this post, maybe next time it rains, you'll look down and think about the poor helpless little worms underfoot......this is how realities are shared. 

What is real to you?