It is not easy to put into words, but I believe most people remain trapped within a learned reality. They uncritically accept what has been handed down to them as the only possible reality. The thought that one might step outside of it, or that alternatives could exist, is for many scarcely conceivable.
Artists, however, seem to form an exception. They possess a natural ability to bend reality and to play with it. A composer, a painter, a writer—each lives in a continual dialogue between fact and imagination. Art demands the loosening of rigid boundaries; it reveals that reality is not static but fluid, malleable, a space where imagination and reality touch.
Most people, by contrast, maintain a strict division between these two domains: imagination is seen as an escape, an illusion, while reality is taken as the solid foundation of facts. Yet this separation is itself artificial. To refuse to link imagination with reality is to miss the essence, for in the deepest sense reality too is nothing more than a construct: a carefully assembled and continually reinforced act of imagination.
If we return to what might be called an original reality—the tree rooted in the earth, the fruit that ripens and is eaten—we encounter existence in its most unmediated form. Here lies the simplicity of being. Everything beyond this is interpretation, projection, human additions that veil reality beneath layers of meaning.
From this perspective, much of what we today take for granted is in fact constructed. Social identities, norms and values, even our notions of progress—these are inventions, not natural laws. They exist only because we collectively acknowledge and maintain them.
This brings me to the idea of the divine. In the past I resisted the word, for it was so often wielded as a dogmatic symbol. Yet in a broader, philosophical sense, God can be understood as nature itself—the incomprehensible yet perfect order in which everything coheres. The complexity of the body, the interdependence of ecosystems, the coming into being and passing away of life: here a reality reveals itself that exceeds our understanding, and which I cannot name otherwise than divine.
The tragedy is that people have forgotten this original and self-evident reality. They take it for granted and no longer see it. Instead, they cling to human-made fictions, mistaking them for truth. And herein lies my frustration: that what people call “reality” is, at its core, a story we have ourselves invented.
Ofoto Ray
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