Reality vs.Illusion

G 215 talks about how writers change their reality to make it be what they want others to see or what they want to remember. This sentence sums this up perfectly by saying, "You do not think of even your own past as quite real...you...censor it, fictionalize it..." This fragment also mentions that "We are all in flight from reality. That is the basic definition of Homo sapiens." I really enjoyed this excerpt because I agree that this is how human nature acts when we interact and write about our lives or experiences. We want everything to seem better than it actually was, or seem more tragic than was necessary. It all depends on the author's objective for what he is writing and it may often include pathos to sway the readers into believing the author's "reality." For me, when I remember past situations that were not pleasant, I either exaggerate the bad parts or what people said, how they said it, etc., or I exaggerate the positives. An example is the common girl rationalization, "Wow, that guy likes me!" when in his reality, he just gave a friendly smile, nothing more.

H 241 compares the body's need of a higher dose of drugs each time to receive the thrill, with the illusion of reality. This "illusion of reality" is "the idea that something really happened-providing us with that thrill right now." We all create our own realities. When we are depressed everything seems to go wrong and even when something that would normally make us happy happens, it may not affect our mood or help us feel any better. It is really quite cruel. I am ashamed to say that unfortunately this is my case some of the time. I just want to wallow in my reality that "nothing is going my way" and "that doesn't make anything better."

I 248 is short and sweet-"We're living in a newsy time." I actually looked up "newsy" and it is a media source that gives up to date news from around the world. This helps to further define this sentence and confirm this statement. We want all the new things, the name brands, the latest styles, the newest songs and videos, this list could seriously go on fffoorrreeevvveeerrr. Anything that is old or out of date just simply won't do in our society. We just want better and more and won't stop until we get it. Well, unfortunately by that time, we will be dead, so good luck with that.

A classmate wrote about fragment H 242 and I agree with almost everything except the part when it says "we can’t experience any event because our life is like a movie that can’t be paused" because if we really tried hard enough, we could slow ourselves down. We have the ability to stop and enjoy the moments in our lives. It doesn't mean we stop and do nothing, just that we appreciate these moments and live them to the fullest. If we are in the right frame of mind, we can experience from our life and pause to analyze it so that we can make ourselves better.