'Tis a puzzling world, Mr. Tulliver declared.

Delusion. Such a pregnant word. We live a delusion, everyday. We interpret, we create, we understand, we relate. What is the real that we not see? What is delusion then? Delusion can be defined only through “reality”. Delusion is when we see anything that is not reality. An imagined reality, then? So what is this reality? You have a situation. Or any event, lets say. The event happens. Four people witness it. Three think the same. One perceives something different. What is the reality? The cautious say they have to witness the event themselves to decide. Or at least get a “non-coloured” view. Bah. It will again, ultimately, be interpretations. So you decide your interpretation. And if it matches the one that the solitary one decided, that is reality. And so the solitary seeks solace in the acceptance of his reality. While the three comfort each other saying that the others are deluded. What if the cautious outsider sided with the reality the three interpreted? The four are content in thinking that the solitary deludes himself in fanciful interpretations of apparent situations. He is wrong. He is blind. He is crazy. The solitary either trembles in rage or doubts his reality.

What if the four agreed in their interpretations of the event? They live happily. If an outsider doesn't agree with them, they dismiss him with an indifferent laugh. What if all four disagreed? We have a fight.

What if they disagreed, but respected each other's realities calmly calling it “difference of opinion”. And left it at that. Easy. We do that, but where we call realities “opinions”. But what about when we are passionate about our opinions? What about when we can’t call it an opinion anymore but a reality? What we call has “no questions” regarding what happened? Like, we say, India was partitioned in 1947. It's a fact, a reality. But is it? Most of the people were bewildered. Standing in the same place as yesterday, they were suddenly transported to another place. A new name to their soil. A surreal “reality”? Another argues, it was a reality that they became two different nations. How? One person felt he was not an Indian. The other felt he was one, but he wasn’t, “really” speaking. He was in “Pakistan’s” soil, a citizen, though he had lived in the same place for decades and been a citizen of that soil. His reality says he is an Indian. But who is to say his reality isn’t real, to him? To him, the keyword. Just as your reality is real, to you. When the many people’s interpretations of reality match, it is reality. Real. Fact.

A schizophrenic lives in a fantasy world. He lives an imagined reality. He conjures up people and places that don’t exist. But all this is very real to him, this world. He is a schizophrenic because they aren’t based on facts, his world, and his interpretations. So he is a schizophrenic. Our difference from him is that our interpretations, our realities are based on facts. Which is about it.