Imagining Reality
The fundamental choice between dreams and reality
BY JASON CHANG
Imagination is one of the fundamental joys of life. It’s one reason people long for the freedom of childhood, where imaginations run amuck, untethered to reason, with days spent in our minds, soaring unburdened above wispy white clouds. Yet imagination and reality are often at odds, and their incompatibility means there comes a time when one must make a choice.
In physics, there is a concept called superposition. Simply put, before an observation is made, a single particle exists at all possible locations, in all possible states. Schroedinger’s cat is both alive and dead and everywhere in between—the potential for any reality exists. But make the choice to observe, and the particle collapses all of these possibilities into one true reality. Everything that could be falls away as you find out what is.
You see, imagination derives its power from the unknown. It draws upon the infinite possibilities, not compressed into reality. It is fueled by the not- knowing, as in the absence of knowledge, it cannot be constrained by the bounds of reality. However, the choice to observe is irreversible. Once you decide to find out, then you know; you have opened Pandora’s box and you can’t ever “un- know” what you have learned. Now that’s great if Mr. Whiskers is still alive and kicking, but he might not appreciate it too much if he ends up dead. And as you decide to find out more and more, you slowly lose the ability to imagine freely as your imagination gets more and more bound by reality, stuffed tighter and tighter into the confines of the box you’ve constructed.
This is relevant for something as simple as watching your favorite TV show. Before you’ve watched the finale, there are a billion possible endings playing out in your mind, each one as equally possible as the next. The lack of certainty fuels boundless excitement as we dream across the limitless space of infinite possibilities. Yet we take the plunge. We take that ability to dream away from ourselves, knowing full well that the reality might not be as good as we imagined. I think perhaps that’s why we so often watch and rewatch our favorite shows, trying to chase the feeling of that first time. But no matter how we try, we can never seem to catch it. We can’t go back. Our imagination is no longer unabated and we’ve lost the ability to fully dream.
So what’s the answer? Should we simply live in naivety for eternity, never finding out anything for sure in fear of clipping our wings in the process? I don’t think so. Trying to convince yourself that reality is better than imagination is hard, but I still want to try.
Reality can offer things imagination cannot. Imagination can never simulate the feel of the ocean waves washing away the grains of sand from between your toes or the butterflies in your stomach when someone says I love you for the first time. Moreover, imagination is intrinsically an activity of isolation. Imagination lies in a space. wholly inaccessible to anyone else. But reality is experienced together. Everything from the smell of the woody smoke from the distant campfire to the way the amber glow from the streetlight glints off the rippling surface of the water is something you all can share. And in those moments life doesn’t have to be so lonely.
Sure, reality might not always be as perfect as we may dream. In fact, it usually is not. But if we live our whole lives in fear that reality might not be what we dreamed, we’ll never truly live. For every pursuit of something real, we must sacrifice potential. We take away the opportunity to dream for a chance to know. But the more I live—the higher highs I taste and the lower lows I endure— the more I am sure that the tradeoff is worth it. Even if most of the time I’m disappointed, it’s all worth it for the times I’m not. When reality is bigger and better than I could have ever imagined. And even if those moments don’t last, I am willing to sacrifice my ability to dream for even a chance to truly grasp something real, even for a second.