Social Pariah

REALITY

 It was still hard for Lucas to face reality. Reality was like a brick that hit you on your head, painful in a way that you wouldn't forget the hurt, thought Lucas. It's the feeling of denial that kept him from going to school for a while. He still wouldn't answer the calls of Namya, Tristan, Samuel and Kyle and he told his Mom that he wasn't feeling well so that he could stay at home.

Why is accepting the truth so hard? Why is this feeling of pain still so foreign to me? He asked himself. Why is life being so harsh? Lucas was still stuck in the world between imagination and reality. It's hard for him to accept the truth for his fantasies are his expectations in reality.

His father used to tell him a lot of life lessons about the difference between the real world and the ideal world we all have in our minds. The ideal world was full of perfection. The real world was full of perfectionists and expectations. The ideal world was full of acceptance and peace. The real world was full of heartbreak, sadness and grief.

"Lucas, do you remember the poem I read to you about the two diverged roads?"

Eight-year old Lucas nodded. "Yes, dad, I remember that. Why?"

Lucas's father smiled. "Robert Frost is a really intelligent poet, don't you think?"

"Uh-huh." Lucas raised an eyebrow. "But why are you telling me this?"

"Son, you have to remember that we are living in reality and not in fantasy. We could always imagine for a perfect world but we can never imagine it being true because it's just our imagination. Reality is harsh and we have two roads to go by. Either we accept reality or we continue to deny that our fantasy isn't real in our eyes." His father shook his head. "You'll only end disappointed in the end of your life."

Lucas grinned. "That's deep, dad!"

His father chuckled. "I know, Lucas, but take this seriously. In this life, we always assume that we know the truth but what we actually know is the warped reality of our youth. We are taught to dream high, dream big, but this can lead to a big death – death of acceptance, acceptance that there's a line between realistic dreams and impossible dreams. If you dream of being a doctor, that's fine but if you dream of being God, that's unrealistic and truly disappointing, son. Same goes for our society. A perfect society is an unrealistic dream but a perfectly imperfect society, where acceptance is the main goal, that is a realistic and really good dream."

Lucas shrugged unsurely. "I don't understand it though."

"Lucas, you will soon."

He was disappointed by the truth for his fantasy was different from reality. Lucas understood his father's words but the pain in his heart was too overbearing and harsh for him to finally accept that not everything he imagined would become real. His reason? Reality was harsh, so harsh he would be.