“Are you for real?”
It’s the kind of thing your friends say when you tell them you’re not going to the party everyone’s talking about, right? But what does it actually mean? What does it mean to be real? Does it mean speaking complete sense, or is it simply a matter of how we feel?
How does a question that sits quietly at the back of your mind suddenly rise to the front, as if it was waiting there all along?
We’re all real. I’m real. You’re real. Right?….
Maybe the real question isn’t whether we’re real at all. Perhaps it’s whether anyone truly understands what being “real” means.
These are the kinds of questions that appear when the lights go out.
You lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, and suddenly your mind decides that sleep can wait. One question becomes two. Two become ten. Before long, you’re tracing thoughts you didn’t even know you had.
That’s normal, your ordinary brain stimulating ordinary thoughts, thoughts that philosophers can’t answer, yet your own peace and dignity will find an answer to.
But somewhere, thousands of miles away, someone years younger or older is lying awake with thoughts not so different from your own.
Yet the questions they ask may be entirely different.
Instead of wondering about the meaning of life or whether they made the right choice, they might be asking, “Where should I hide tomorrow?” Or perhaps, “What can I feed my little brother when we wake up?”
One lies awake wondering what tomorrow will bring; another wonders whether tomorrow will come.
One stares at the ceiling lost in possibility; another listens to the darkness for danger.
One dreams of the future; the other is just trying to survive the night.
The same night stretches above them both. The same stars hang overhead. Yet the distance between their lives is measured by far more than miles.
And when morning comes, one complains about having to get out of bed.
The other is simply grateful that they can.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking thing is that neither of them asked for the life they were given.
They were simply born into different stories.
And that just brings us back to the question , “Are You Real?”
Yes.
The teenager scrolling through TikTok at 2 a.m , reposting videos after a day that felt heavier than anyone else realised, IS REAL.
The 6 year old who has become more parent than child, carrying her two-year-old brother on her hip and responsibilities far too large for her small shoulders, IS REAL.
Their fears are REAL. Their hopes are REAL. Their pain is REAL. Yet we move through our lives as if reality is measured only by what we see, by what appears on our screens, by what affects us.
Maybe being real was never about proving that we exist.
Maybe it’s about recognising that every person we pass is living a reality as vivid, complex, and important as our own.