Have you ever paused and discovered that it’s so easy to get lost in the counterfeit? …or realized that we live in a world where the counterfeit seems more real than the real?

Check out this conversation between Morpheus and Neo from the movie ‘The Matrix’.

Morpheus: I see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, that’s not far from the truth. …Do you believe in fate, Neo?

Neo: No.

Morpheus: Why not?

Neo: Because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.

Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Neo: The Matrix.

Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
…
Neo: This — This isn’t real?

Morpheus: What is real? How do you define real?

The Matrix is just another sci-fi movie and is not real, but this conversation is a challenge of perspective and reality. Through my own experiences, I will be the first to annotate life as a contact sport, but what is the state of the human condition (or the depths of individual struggles) that drives people to disconnect from life and escape into daydream or embrace the counterfeit?

How far off center is your online or social space persona from your real true self?

What have you sold out to for acceptance?

What have you given your life to?

Do you look for an escape from reality and conform to the opinions and expectations of others or are you truly alive to your own uniqueness, becoming the person you were created to be?

I wonder if we have become so acclimated to the counterfeit that we can no longer identify what’s real.