Reality

There's something about reality that tends to drive people to irrationality. It's cold, harsh, and utterly impersonal, and it's realization crashed over one all at once, with no time allotted for them to adjust to it.

It's like waking up in the morning, almost. For a moment, often an infentismal span of time immediatly forgotten, you know nothing, feel nothing, remember nothing. You are given this split second of total, blissful ignorance--then reality crashes in on you, full force. The world, your life, and all your troubles rush into your mind, all at once, in a chaotic jumble not unlike a city in the aftermath of some great earthquake.

This experience, this 'reality check' has been likened to many things over the years: "a slap in the face," "being hit by a ton of bricks," and "taking a bull by the horns," ranking foremost among them. These phrases are cliques all, and yet it's sad how true they are. That moment where our pure, innocent, unsuspecting psyche's are overwhelmed by reality has the same effect on us as throwing pitch on a clean white sheet would have on that sheet. It's blatant, severe, and traumatic--and that's just when you're the busy housewife watching someone destroy her linens!
Yet that blast of reality is rarely remembered even seconds later. It's a natural part of life, a logical consequence for the act of waking each morning. Could we remain in that state of unawareness for any length of time, we would never grow as people, or as a society. We would fall apart, stagnate, and fall into ruin, because ignorance may be bliss, but reality is what makes things worth living and dying for.
Everyone wants to belive in something: religion, truth, science, whatever...but no one can belive in anything if nothing is real. For if nothing is real, than we are not real...and if we are not real, what are we?