by Lana Evans

Created on: April 18, 2008

There is reality, and there is truth. One of these relies on perception, and the other does not. Yet, it's easy to assume that they are the same thing.

Some consider truth a personal experience. Others see truth as a universal set of conditions.I believe in the latter; that truth is a universal reality. When I write stories, I put myself into what is called the 'omniscient narrative position'. I get to be the all-knowing author, observing characters who experience reality as a more or less personal experience. But the characters are not always aware of where the other characters are, or what they're thinking or doing. Fiction does parallel with nonfiction in this respect. We are like characters attempting to define reality. We don't base our definition of reality on some omniscient truth, but on our perceptions; our personal psychology and social situations.

I have no need to question whether what I feel and experience truly exists. I think that is a misguided approach to defining reality. Questions about a tree falling in the forest are, yes, pretty entertaining, but they have no relevance in seriously defining reality. I don't ask whether this or that truly exists; it doesn't matter, because even if I went to extremes to decide this or that doesn't exist, something does; even if it's only my consciousness. Even if nothing else is real, our illusions, at the very least, are real.

Personally, I don't doubt my reality. If ever there truly was a void in existence, meaning that I didn't exist at all, then, clearly, I wouldn't be able to question reality in the first place. The nonexistent 'I' wouldn't be aware of my own, or any other, nonexistence. Things exist. Period. They may not be as I think they are, but something is there. There is that which we actually perceive, and there is that which simply is. The latter I regard as truth, whether we perceive it, misperceive it, or don't perceive it.

So, it isn't truth that is based on what we see and feel, but reality. In fact, something may exist even though we don't see it or feel it. Take the electron, for example. Scientists rely on this tiny dot of energy to design all kinds of useful things. Those inventions could never work if there were no such thing as an electron. Yet, no one has ever seen an electron. No one, not even scientists. It is too small to see, even with the most highly powered microscopes available. There is a misconception; that an electron microscope is used to see electrons. Electron microscopes

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