Is it Real, or Memorex?

As an English major at Pace university, I loved the writings of Luigi Pirandello. His works broke the separation between playwrights and audience. And even more significantly he blurred the concept of what is real and what is not.

He walked between the burning embers of what appeared to be fact and the flame of the imaginary. In works such as “Six Characters in Search of an Author” he completely broke down my awareness and consciousness of what was actual and what was hallucinatory.

When “I love you” turns to “I will a contract killer and have you wiped off the face of the earth” there is a problem. Things change over time, but does that mean that what is real changes too?

Was reality the love you felt when you first met your wife to be or is the hatred you feel for the lying bitch now? How do you determine which is real and not faith.

It’s all in the eyes and consciousness of the beholder. The essence and the core of it is that reality is not eternal but it is what you feel at that moment. Living in the present is all that’s real.

It is not unlike those who believe in an afterlife. As I ruminate about my past and think about five failed marriages, and a son who was ashamed of me, the collapse of my business and loss of everything I own – I ask myself where those experiences real? It happened so long ago that my past life doesn’t seem real anymore. It seems like a drug induced fairy tale instead of something that really happened.

My biggest flaw and personal failure was not accommodating the growth of the internet. At that time what was real to me was newsprint. The same failure has affected every other publisher, but not as much as me.

My failures are not uncommon. Living in the moment helped me create a small empire but also caused my downfall.

Enjoy those real moments now, while you have it because you will die one day. The moment is the only reality we can comprehend, but our true fate is in the hands of something else.