If Reality Is Real... What Does That Mean?
If it is already too late, then all that remains is to confront the question as it is. But before doing so, we must ask what appears to be a simple question, yet one that carries immense consequences: What does it mean for reality to be real?
If we accept the reality of reality itself, then we must also accept the reality of everything it contains. Every bend becomes real. Every fracture becomes real. Every pain becomes real. Every sigh becomes real. Every illness becomes real. Every tragedy becomes real. Everything that weighs upon existence becomes an undeniable reality that cannot simply be bypassed.
At that point, a far harsher question emerges: Where is bliss?
If reality is the only truth, then bliss becomes nothing more than a fleeting exception—a temporary image that quickly fades away, as though it exists only to deepen disappointment rather than provide lasting salvation. Joy, in this view, becomes merely a brief pause amid prolonged suffering, until hell itself appears more consistent with the structure of reality than bliss, and bliss comes to resemble a story that reality tells itself in order to keep going.
Within this perspective, health is no longer the original state; illness appears more fundamental. What shapes reality, drives its events, and gives it form is not completeness but deficiency. The forces that move life are not complete forces but incomplete ones. It is deficiency that generates movement, whereas completeness produces nothing.
If reality itself is founded upon deficiency, then pain is not an accidental occurrence but an essential part of its very structure. Suffering becomes like a hump that never leaves its bearer, or a curse that accompanies a person wherever they go.
Perhaps this is what drives people to cling to another possibility: that reality itself may be an illusion. Not because illusion is more convincing, but because the alternative is far more terrifying. Human beings do not flee reality for its own sake; they flee the realization of what they fear within reality. And what do they fear? They fear the arrival of suffering, the arrival of pain, and everything that shatters the image they hold of life.
Sometimes the thing we desire most is not that something wonderful should happen, but that what we fear should never happen. It is as though non-occurrence has become more merciful than any event that could occur, because everything that enters the realm of reality carries with it a measure of pain.
The denser reality becomes, the more events accumulate, and the more relentlessly circumstances unfold, the more suffering asserts its presence. Eventually, the question of how one can live in such a world becomes more urgent than the question of life's meaning itself.
Human beings have tried to place every possibility before themselves and to confront every question that others fear. Yet, in the end, they discover that there has always been one possibility they continually postponed facing—not because it was impossible, but because it was the most terrifying of them all. At times they approached it with courage, only to retreat the moment their natural fear of suffering returned.
For no matter how courageous a person may be, they remain a being who fears suffering, and that fear grows stronger as life's events become more severe. Perhaps the hardest thing a person faces is not pain itself, but the possibility that pain may be the only reality from which there is no escape.
Yet the problem does not end with questioning the reality of reality itself. It extends to the human being and to the hidden thread upon which they unknowingly rely. Every person lives with an unspoken assumption—a silent certainty that grants them the strength to continue, even if they have never consciously examined it or attempted to test it.
For a long time, I believed I possessed such a certainty. It was like a treasure buried in a secret place. I never needed to uncover it as long as life continued normally, yet simply knowing it was there filled me with reassurance. I would tell myself: if every path were to close completely, I could always return to it, and it would be enough to carry me forward once again.
But curiosity—or perhaps existential exhaustion—eventually led me to examine this certainty that I had never truly tested before. It was like someone who has kept a fortune buried for years and one day decides to verify that it is still there.
That was when the shock arrived.
The moment I drew near to that certainty, I discovered how fragile it truly was. It was not as solid as I had imagined. It had remained intact only so long as I never touched it. The moment I tried to verify it, it began to dissolve little by little until it seemed as though it had never existed at all.
Only then did I realize that the confidence with which I had lived for so many years had not rested upon a genuine foundation, but upon a certainty that I had never once put to the test. I had built my life upon something incapable of bearing its own weight the moment it was questioned.
Perhaps that is why, throughout all those years, I devoted myself to dealing with everything that came after the introduction while avoiding the introduction itself. I analyzed problems, examined consequences, and discussed the branches, yet I consistently avoided the question that preceded them all, because deep down I knew that approaching my fundamental assumptions might mean the collapse of the entire structure.
Human beings do not live by ideas alone. They live by what they assume to be true without proof. These assumptions are not merely opinions; they are the foundations upon which the entire psychological structure rests. Questioning them is therefore not like changing an opinion or revising a position—it is like removing the pillars of a building while its inhabitants are still inside.
Perhaps this is why people cling to their principles even when those principles become burdensome. They do not defend them merely because they are always correct, but because their collapse may bring down everything that has been built upon them.
Yet there are moments when a person feels that carrying these principles has become more exhausting than the possibility of losing them. Not because they have proven them false, but because they have grown weary of guarding them. Then a question quietly emerges—one they had never previously allowed themselves to ask: What if I remove the foundation altogether? What, if anything, would remain?
Despite its apparent simplicity, this question resembles the decision to demolish an entire building rather than merely remove a single stone. Once one fundamental principle is allowed to fall, every other principle becomes open to examination, and the entire structure begins to unravel piece by piece.
From that moment on, a person does not collapse all at once. Instead, they begin letting go of things gradually. First an idea, then a certainty, then a desire, then a project. It is as though they are dismantling themselves piece by piece while, at the same time, trying to preserve the smallest possible outline of an identity that still allows them to function in the world.
It resembles a company that has declared bankruptcy yet keeps a small office open—not to continue its business, but merely to settle its remaining obligations and close the files that are still pending. Its purpose is no longer to build, but to manage its own ending.
In much the same way, a person begins to retain only a few social roles—not because they still believe in them, but because those roles provide the minimum capacity required to continue existing before others. Over time, even those roles are gradually reduced, one after another, until only the final role remains: the one that quietly closes the door behind everything else.
Yet even amid this inner collapse, the desire to live does not disappear completely. A small spark remains—fragile, hesitant, and easily extinguished. From time to time it returns. A person may wake one morning determined to try again, willing to place hope in another possibility despite having no guarantee that it will succeed. But before long, that spark fades once more, the same questions return, and with them comes the unending struggle between the desire to continue and the temptation to declare complete existential bankruptcy.
Perhaps what makes this struggle so painful is that the desire for life is not lost all at once. Instead, what gradually disappears are the reasons that once made life worth continuing. The question therefore ceases to be, "Do I want to live?" and becomes, "What remains that is still worth living for?"
At this point, a file that had remained closed for years quietly reopens—not as a genuine wish, but as an existential question that forces itself into awareness whenever every path seems blocked: What does it mean for a person to end their own life rather than allow it to end slowly on its own? And what is the difference between choosing one's own ending and allowing reality to choose it gradually instead?
These questions do not arise from a love of death, but from an overwhelming collision with reality. When reality appears capable of producing nothing but suffering, a person begins to reexamine even the most self-evident assumptions. And yet, one final thread still prevents complete collapse—not because a new certainty has been found, but because there remains a quiet conviction that every possible path must first be explored before one can honestly conclude that the road has truly come to an end.
For this reason, the thought was never an impulsive rush toward an immediate ending. It was always postponed until every conceivable possibility had been exhausted. As long as there remains even one possibility untested, one door unopened, or one explanation left unexamined, the end cannot be justified, because no judgment is valid before the attempt has been completed.
Yet the problem does not lie in the absence of a desire to seek help, but in the nature of help itself. When people face an ordinary crisis, they can usually turn to those around them because the problem is clear and its possible solutions are generally understood. But when the crisis concerns the very structure upon which consciousness itself is built, conventional forms of help often seem incapable of reaching the true source of the pain.
This is not because others are unwilling to help, but because they naturally offer what they know rather than what the person actually needs. As a result, some forms of support may become an additional burden, addressing symptoms that are not the real source of the problem while leaving the deepest wound untouched.
At this point, the sense of helplessness grows even stronger. It is no longer merely an inability to endure pain, but an inability to find someone who can perceive the problem as it truly is rather than as it appears from the outside. Every person proposes solutions based on the limits of their own experience, while the origin of the crisis may lie entirely beyond those limits.
When a person realizes this, they begin to feel trapped within a dilemma that cannot easily be communicated to others. They are no longer searching for comforting words or ready-made advice. They are searching for an accurate understanding of the structure that gave rise to the collapse in the first place. At times, it seems to them that the problem requires not another remedy, but the complete removal of its root.
From here, another kind of struggle begins. While confidence in the effectiveness of solutions gradually fades, a small part of the self continues to resist surrender. It is almost invisible, yet it persists with remarkable determination. Occasionally, a person awakens with the desire to try once more, only for that desire to disappear again after a few hours or days, returning them to exactly the same place.
It is a condition in which hope and despair coexist without either overcoming the other. Despair never becomes complete enough to constitute an ending, and hope never grows strong enough to become a genuine new beginning. The individual remains suspended between the two, living each day as though it were an isolated experiment, unwilling to make a long-term commitment to the future because they no longer trust even their ability to know who they themselves will be only a few days later.
When a person reaches this stage, what frightens them most is no longer death itself, but the possibility of losing themselves. They fear waking one day to discover that even the minimum sense of identity by which they once recognized themselves has disappeared. They fear that the features of their inner world will erode until they become strangers to themselves before they ever become strangers to the world.
Perhaps this is the cruelest meaning of annihilation: not the cessation of the body, but the loss of the ability to recognize oneself, and the collapse of the final traces that once revealed who one truly was.
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