What is reality?

When I was about eight years old (it's funny how all stories from my childhood seem to
have happened when I was about eight; it must have been a hell of a year) my church
held a public celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation.

What this means was that we would line up, walk down the aisle, and when our turn came
blurt out a few whispered sins to the priest, who would give us a penance in return. It was
kind of like being on the conveyor belt at the supermarket, except instead of a little "beep"
at the end of the ride, you got a few Hail Marys and absolution.

I, of course, was terrified. The priest and my CCD teacher (I never did learn what CCD
stood for) and everyone else told me I had to look deep into my conscience and confess
my very worst sin, and the sin I had was a doozy. I wasn't so much worried about the
penance I'd have to do as I was about the expression on the priest's face when I told him,
assuming I didn't simply burst into flames on the spot.

When my turn came, I could barely get the words out. "I... I did something really bad..." I
whispered. "It was in a dream..."

"You don't have to confess that," the priest smiled. "If it happened in a dream, it wasn't
your fault." And he made the sign of the cross over me, and that was it. Except that it
wasn't. I didn't understand why I shouldn't be held accountable for the sins I knew I'd
committed, just because I happened to be asleep at the time. After all, I hadn't known I
was asleep.

It's not that I couldn't tell the difference between the world of dreams and reality (although
I've certainly been accused of that before). I'm not, for example, in the situation any of the
main characters of the last three films I've seen find themselves. In "Waking Life," the
twentysomething protagonist drifts from one lucid dream to another, always startled to
discover that what he thought was reality is only another dream. (Since his life seems to
be an endless series of pseudo-philosophical dialogues, it's an understandable mistake).
In "Open Your Eyes," the hero is trapped in a nightmarish situation that might be a dream,
might be reality, or might be a paranoid delusion. In "Mullholland Drive"... well, damned if
I have any idea what was going on, but the worlds of reality, dream, fantasy and fiction
are blurred, to say the least.

How do we know what's real and what isn't? How do I know what I take to be my life isn't
just a series of sitcom episodes (probably on the Disney Channel, which would explain
certain aspects of my romantic life)? What if I'm the only "real" person in the world, and
everyone else is a figment of my imagination? (This strikes me as a bit too solipsistic, and
anyway, I would never have dreamed up John Ashcroft). To what extent can my will alter
reality? And does any of this matter?

Well, yeah, if you accept the distinction the priest from my church made way back when:
that there's a difference between the world of fact and the world of fiction, that what
happens in our dreams doesn't really matter, that there really is a "here" here.

And that may well be. But how the heck do any of us know what it is? I've always liked
Philip K. Dick's saying (as quoted by my former roommate, Brad) that "reality is what
doesn't go away when you stop believing in it." There's a lot to be said for that. But it
doesn't tell me whether relationships I've been in (which went away when both of us
stopped believing in them) were "real." Or whether the personality I manifest (which I've
come to doubt lately) is my "real" self. Or whether certain decisions I've made about my
future are what I'm "really" supposed to do.

I prefer the definition my dad gave me, when the two of us were sitting around
procrastinating on Christmas afternoon, and I told him I had no idea whether I'd made
the right decision about what to do with the next few years of my life.

"Well, that's the great thing about life," he said. "There are no right decisions. You just
do the best with what you have."

I like that idea. I don't know whether what I'm doing counts as reality or just a dream I
have, but whatever it is, and whoever I am, I'm going to do my best with what I have. If it
turns out I'm dreaming, at least it will be a good dream, and that's something worth
having.

Postscript:

Tonight, when I told my brother I'd watched "Open Your Eyes" on Friday, he asked, "Isn't
that 'Vanilla Sky'?"

"It's the movie 'Vanilla Sky' was based on," I said. "The Spanish version."

"You're a pretentious snob," he said, which was true. Maybe that applies to this entry, too.
But at least I'm writing again.