Reality Is Relative

Defining Reality

Everyone perceives reality in a different light. Reality is a result of the upbringing and surroundings of an individual and, as a person matures, they are exposed to more ideas, thoughts, and events. The actions and events that a person is exposed to are communicated through language, which defines reality by allowing people to become receptive to different ideas. While language can expand ones reality, language also places limits on that reality. Society, geography and language simultaneously expand and limit an individual's reality.

Our Surroundings and Reality

Our surroundings affect reality, and therefore reality is constantly redefined as the world changes. An individual's perception of reality will never stay the same from one moment to another, because everything a person reads, hears, or sees changes his or her perception. Freire expands on the concept of a constantly changing reality; people are "unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality." The interpretation of reality for a given person is constantly changing, and is related to what a person has been exposed to.