Reality vs Fiction

Reality

• The full set of senses in any given situation, even if some tell you nothing (just because they're telling you nothing doesn't mean they're not there. Disorientation is because the system is in place to sense but it isn't sensing instead of they system sudden becoming absent).
• Food, earthy and satisfying if not always as adventurous as the mind would like. Food for the soul, for comfort and for survival belongs in reality.
• Childhood antics, largely inclusive of fictional aspects even though they aren't always from a fictional source - except the mind, that is.
• Schooling where fiction is largely stamped out of you, except in drama, English and art classes. Reality becomes a long drawn out vision of jobs and housing and bills but there is a brief glimpse of freedom somewhere at the end of schooling. Our hearts live in hope of being able to explore this freedom, especially as the bell rings for the next class.
• Sports allow us to burn off some of the aggression and need for social play that builds up through out involuntary time behind a desk. This practice may go on for years and years as the desk changes from a school desk to a work desk.
• Dance, cooking, language, art, drama etc classes offer social and imaginative escapes that also provide information and skills. These do not change our everyday life as much as we hope but they do provide an escape and heighten our ability to make our lives more colourful or eventful.
• The short break of freedom is often spent travelling, drinking, having sex with strangers, imbibing in drugs, lazing about with your feet up, proclaiming you'll never sell out.
• The sell out. Necessity forces you to get a job and pay bills  once you move out of home. There is the wild thought of packing it all in and being completely free but the idea of few showers, scrounging for food, not having a roof over your head during rainy or cold weather and above all no bed turns most people off the idea of truly backpacking about without the money that comes from working.
• Office jobs drive most either batty through boredom or through playing for power. That reality you're supposed to be working within becomes a little lost between the grey walls of an office building, the endless phone calls and meetings from strangers pretending to be friends, the endless stream of business demands that can never be stopped without either a jump from the window, a sacking/quitting or a dissolution of the business. If escape is through any of the last lot then a new job with much the same environment awaits you.
• Other indoor jobs, often menial, labour intensive but if your lucky engaging of the mind, allowing you to engage with the realities of life like the teaching of youngsters to survive. Unfortunately by this stage you're a little displeased with the lack of freedom and superpowers you'd hoped for when you were a kid so in the back of your mind you're wondering if its all truly worth it. Does it really matter? Most of you will continue on and do a good job anyway, possibly with the intention of defying such thoughts and possibly with wholehearted concern for others, but there are some who will crack and decide it really isn't worth it so mediocre work is all that's needed.
• Outdoors jobs provide work within reality but the work is often hard on the body, leading to many having to quit the manual job they love for an indoor one they don't so much. But still, if the path of an outdoors job is taken then there is a feeling connection to be had with people, life and physical reality that goes beyond business demands.
• The life of crime beckons to some as it is as close to freedom as its possible to get. Unfortunately, if caught by law enforcement or by enemies then that freedom becomes short lived. There are many problems with the life of crime, enough that most decide it is all far to hard and stressful.
• Family is one of the big troubles that come our way. Family life is always tumultuous and the only time there is extended calm is if multiple people are bottling their emotions. This isn't a good thing... Still, family is closer to you than most, friends included. They can see your dreams and forgive you most things but they can also deal out the worst hurt. Navigating family can be difficult but unless something goes drastically wrong they will remain by you for life. Whether you like it or not.
• True friends are always fewer than we'd like but they can remain for a long, long time. Life changes everyone so a few may drop away for lack of connection or similarities. Some negotiating and growing must be done to keep your close friends, especially when they become close enough to be considered like family for, as written above, family is a no-holds-barred endless squabble. A lot of those remaining sociable walls will have to be dropped sometime if friends are to become family.
• Love relationships are one of the big troubles that come our way in life. There are so many ups and downs that your head starts to get turned about and you see downs as ups and ups downs. If you're lucky you finally settle on one person and develop a stable relationship. Also, if you're lucky you chose to live with your heart reserved and don't get too invested in all the kerfuffle that comes with love. If you're unlucky you get lost in the maze that is love and fail to find your way, either in your own heart or in a relationship.
• Marriage is still only for some of us which can bring relationship and political turmoil to those it isn't available to. But sometimes there's cause to wonder why you'd want such a thing in the first place. Marriage brings a high at its beginning, then a lull and if you're lucky a smooth flow of comfortable love but there's only one partner at a time and your whole heart has to be invested, creating a blindness to others. But if you aren't so lucky in marriage then life gets more than a bit rocky. It would seem like this could be a good thing, as it breaks up the daily routine, but really it is just stress added to the stress of doing what you must rather than what you'd love. Disasters can also result from marriage breakdowns, both for you and for your children, and at such times you wonder where all that love and romance went and if it was ever true. Still, if you survive many of you will go searching for that love and romance again, addicted to the idea if not the reality.
• Children are either one of the delights of life or one of the nightmares, depending on whether you wanted or intended them and whether you can love them. All children will drive their parents a bit batty but most of the time this is a delight as it breaks up the now horrible treadmill work has become for the majority of us. Not only because of their abilities to break up the monotony but because they bring back the childlike imagination once they reach a certain age and are happy.
• The lack of children can be both a relief and a crushing disappointment, depending on the hopes you'd had for family life. Dealing with negative reaction to a lack of children can force you to face aging and the meaning of life at an earlier stage than would otherwise happen. This can lead to a few epiphanies as well as a complete change in lifestyle choices as those previously made were with consideration of children to come rather than entirely for yourself or your partner.
• Aging and the realisation of what that means - your own inevitable death - forces you to wonder what you've been doing with your life, what it means and why its all the way it is. There is much soul searching to be done and this might take a little while but eventually the choices that were made at the end of schooling are remade, with the result either the same or with a new path taken. But even these new paths will likely include jobs and bills and relationships and family. Much is the same just as it is different but hopefully some peace comes out of choosing a path that suits you better.
• Facing the inevitability of life and death can be humbling, crushing and enlightening. It can strengthen and weaken but inevitably life and death will happen to you anyway, whether you face this properly or not. Wisdom comes to those who face it and nothing comes to those who don't. But the only benefit of wisdom is found in the passing on of it so unless you're in the sharing mood gaining wisdom doesn't really help you much except in facing down your own death. But even then it has value.
• Deaths of people you care for do indeed bring this reality home to you along with the sadness and pain of loss. Seeing those you care for die makes you realise just how important it is to others how you face your own death. The problem with this is despite your probable desires to face death in a graceful, dignified and peaceful manner the process of death may now allow you to do so. What actually kills you may be a long process of illness or a short encounter with something more solid than yourself and neither offer great opportunities for dignity, gracefulness or peacefulness. Still, if you're aware enough you can make sure that people only see you in your best light and give them some form of comfort. And that's about the best any of us can do.
• Much of the turmoil of life can cause you to desire an escape from reality. This escape can come through travel, thereby an uprooting from routine and freeing of the mind, or through extra projects and activities. There's even an opportunity for physical freedom through pleasure seeking of any sort but there are many pitfalls to be found in this that usually end up in a realisation that death is as close as it likes at any point in life. There is no guarantee of making it to old age or even middle age. Hell, some people are lucky to make it to their teens. Escapes only last so long and reality tends to reinforce its presence in your life through the above list of means. All except one form of escape that is.
• There is one form of escape that can always be had, no matter who you are or where you are or your situation in life. And that is the escape into the imaginary, fiction as it were. You can escape this way either through making fiction (just mentally or for others to appreciate) or appreciating fiction. Fiction wiles away your time without making you face any more reality than you'd like and engages the excess energies of your mind in the process. If you're making fiction you hope to have an impact on the fictional worlds of others and do your best to produce great works. If you appreciate then you'll choose those works you'd like to explore the most.

Fiction

• Offers multiple worlds.
• Offers multiple roles.
• Provides a choice of characters to identify with.
• There's a possibility of crushing on a character (its true, it happens).
• Allows for a variety of adventures to go on.
• Lots of new information to learn.
• Allows you to face reality or not according to personal desires.
• Allows you to gain wisdom not through experience.
• Provides an option to learn nothing new through rereading or sticking to one style.
• Offers an endless supply of material new to the reader if not to publication.
• Provides portable worlds.
• Offers quick escape routes from reality.
• Engages the mind and heart in one.
• Offers options to delve into the human heart and mind and discover more of what we are.
• Gives us the ability to solve the mysteries of the real universe even if it is impossible in reality.
• Provides believable explanations as to the meaning of life, no matter how incredible.
• Can give us new laws of physics to navigate.
• There's the possibility of self-propelled flight, wings optional.
• Superpowers can be yours.
• Gives everyone the ability to teleport and time travel as well as travel through space.
• Allows multiple worlds can collide and meld.
• Your dreams can become real for as long as you like, especially if you create fiction.
• Offers wild sexual fantasies for the adventurous, more than reality can often offer.
• Offers strange meal ideas and hints at the emotional impact of known foods.
• Gives you a choice of age you wish to be.
• A choice of job or experience to have or to gain.
• Provides a choice of relationships, both in type and multiplicity.
• Gives you another set of family and friends.
• There's a choice of being good, bad, vicious, loving, fierce, powerful, desirable etc.
• There's a possibility of a world being unexciting but there's the option of switching that world for another immediately.
• Can alter your value sets.
• Provides a choice in sensory engagement.
• Gives you complete freedom of the mind.
• Comes from engagement with reality, whether through embracing reality or denying it.

Winner?

Can't create fiction without reality. Can't deal with reality without fiction. You choose your mindscape as you go through life and it is never one thing or the other. It is always a blend. 

For those of us addicted to fiction, there's either too much energy to be spent in our everyday lives, an addiction to exploring and gathering information or there's a cause for escape. For those addicted to reality, there's little I have to say to you. I'm of the opposite camp. But still, there is much value for me in reality so I will say that I cannot live without it (sorry for the bad pun but it can't be helped). If I cannot create fiction without reality then I will always deal with reality head on so that I've got more fodder. I might not be addicted but there's still cause to engage.