Life on Mars

Last night I watched the final episode of Life on Mars, my favorite BBC drama du jour. As the plot crescendoed to the denouement, Sam Tyler asks what is real. Well, actually… he asks that throughout the series. But this time he got an answer to drive us to the end. Real is when you feel.

I’ve been watching the two seasons of this show for about a month now, as I edit and read a lot of paranormal fiction. So… not surprising, this question resonates. What is real?

So, uh, what exactly is in your morning coffee there, Jessie? Maybe it’s the pensivity that comes with a sunny Sunday morning. I don’t think this a question I can answer. Not in a blog. Not in a lifetime. That’s… well… really, that’s why I stay away from religion. Because I like the vagary. I am content with the fact there is no answer and one definition of reality.

Except… we do define it. By what makes us feel. Another Brit I admire, Iris Murdoch, wrote “Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” Feeling. Not seeing. Not touch. Not sound. Something in our gut. Not very scientific, huh?

So no wonder we live in a world of so many coexisting realities. Some overlap and live together quite nicely, even melding into one sympathetic vision. But obviously… well, we have severe clashes and distortions that divide us in a fight to argue the proof of our authenticity.

This actually resonates more in the headlines I read than my contemplation of the believability of the fantasy I’ve been writing. Because between my edits and every day as I sit at my computer at work, I read the news and fail to comprehend how we are so divided in this country about… helping people.

The thing I like about Life on Mars is that it immerses us in a different time in history, when certain moral questions were… well unthought of. A lack of technology. A lack of reason as our modern world determines a nobrainer. Granted, this show was still written in 2005 with the taint of a 21st century reality, but… it does take off the gloss and sheen of a romanticized past. And it doesn’t really… apologize for it. So… there is a question as I watch the cops brutally beat the suspects and abuse their female co-worker… but it all resolves in a way that makes sense for the world in which they live… is that reality wrong? Or is it right for the circumstances in which it exists?

But eventually, we did figure out it isn’t a good thing to sexually harass a woman just because… she’s a woman. To beat people. We created systems and a process whereby things shaped a better reality. Racism was okay forty years ago until we decided that truth wasn’t a good truth. So we changed it. And now we have a black president.

What is real to me… what makes me feel… is a daily desire to see us evolve as human beings. Us. I also mean self. And really, that is the one being over whom I have complete control. But in the larger picture, the world, politics, the country… I hope that we will shift our reality to one where it isn’t evil to want to help people. That a government that protects us isn’t derailed as a despotic attempt to turn this country into socialism. That we all have a responsibility to give something of ourselves to make things better for people whose reality isn’t so charmed with good fortune.

I understand the reality where that isn’t okay. I understand the fear that giving away too much will unravel everything and leave holes for enterprising evils to make their way through. But in a reality where people are good and want to do good, that fear has no power.

Ah… I suppose this is more a conversation for a bottle or two of wine at the witching hour of night. After watching Life on Mars. I recommend it. It could make you think about reality… or at least if we are really better off with cell phones.