In The Truman Show, Jim Carrey gives one of his best performances. His character, Truman Burbank, discovers that his whole life is a big reality TV show. My favorite part of the movie is when he runs into the edge of his world. Who knew the sky could be so hard?
My experience in Malaysia is the opposite of The Truman Show. In the movie, Truman assumed his surroundings were real and then discovered they were fake. The first time I visited Malaysia, I felt like someone had abducted me from my daily reality and put me in a movie set. The huge, beautiful, tropical trees dwarfed me. The diverse people, languages, and religions both intrigued and puzzled me. The various culinary genres delighted my taste buds.
The trees, people, languages, religions, foods, and many other parts of the culture(s) here still amaze me, but they no longer seem fake. The realities here have become more real for me.
Nevertheless, I tend to agree with both Plato and the Bible (and other wise sources) that the realities we experience in this world are incomplete when compared with the ultimate reality, which we can never fully understand in our contemporary broken realities. Thus, even in Malaysia, with the junglish vegetations and the exquisite but inexpensive cuisines and the winding mountain roads to highland paradises, what seems a bit more real than it did in 1998 is still not quite real.
May we keep our eyes on the reality we cannot see and remain grateful for the realities we can see.
